In A Good Way
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Carick. "The Elders say...we must treat her in a good way." Rick hasn't always been honest with himself or with her. Now he realizes that he needs her, all the facets of her, by his side. But is it possible to come back from what he's done and where they've been to start over and build something new? Can he treat her, now, as he should and failed to do in the past?
1. Chapter 1

**AN: This prompt was planted there by a reader/reviewer of a story. For the moment, she'll remain anonymous in case she doesn't want to be named. If she wants to be named later, then I'll surely give her credit for coming along and asking me to try my hand at Carick at a moment when it struck me as something I really wanted to do.**

**I've never written Carick before, so this is entirely new to me. I seldom even write the character of Rick with any detail, so this will be an adventure for me, both in where the story goes and how I decide to actually portray the characters to get it there.**

**If Carick is not your cup of tea, or this story isn't, then I understand entirely. If you decide to read, though, then I hope that you enjoy. Let me know what you think! **

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"**The Elders say the men should look at women in a sacred way. The men should never put women down or shame them in any way. When we have problems, we should seek their counsel. We should share with them openly. A woman has intuitive thought. She has access to another system of knowledge that few men develop. She can help us understand. We must treat her in a good way." –Author unknown. **

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He'd always heard that people, when they were truly crazy, didn't realize their own madness. It would stand to reason, then, that he wasn't insane, because for the longest time he'd _felt _like he barely had a grasp on anything.

He could almost imagine his mind being tethered to a string and looped around the finger of some invisible force that was treating it like something of a yo yo.

Rick Grimes couldn't exactly say that he'd ever had anything in mind as the way that life would be at the end of the world, but it was pretty safe to say that this wasn't what he would have envisioned if anyone might have asked him.

Now they were headed toward Virginia as fast as their feet could take them there. They were headed toward some kind of heaven on Earth where they could stop walking. They could stop fighting. They could stop looking over their shoulders and never knowing if they'd find, just behind them, a hoard of hungry Walkers or an evil person whose ill intent was no longer reined in by the law and the government that had, if not kept them entirely under control, at least kept them from showing their full selves.

Of course, in a world that was empty of the more obvious demons and villains, people were left to deal with the scariest ones of all –the ones that lived inside them.

Rick knew that he'd spent a lot of time blaming everyone else.

Each step closer they got to Virginia, it became clearer to him that he'd spent most of his time, at least since the world had turned upside down, blaming everyone else for what was wrong in his life and in the lives of everyone else.

He was supposed to be their leader.

But he didn't feel much like a leader.

And every hit the group took? It was another hit directly to him and to his ego. Each loss that they suffered was a loss that was _his_ in a way that it belonged to no one else.

Everything was just another clear sign that he wasn't made for the position that he was in and that, at best, he was somewhat fooling them into believing that he was stronger and smarter than he was. He felt, though, like some of them already knew that he was barely holding it together. And he feared the rest of them would know before long.

And what was worse? A group looking toward a broken leader or a group with no leader to look to at all?

_Of course, there was potential for a new leader. A leader in someone that he might never have believed could have been a leader at all._

_Once, though, she wouldn't have believed it of herself either._

He pretended that he wanted to _lean_ on her, just a little. He pretended that he wanted to work _with _her to make it to Virginia. When he asked her, not sure even how to form the words that still hung in his mind and begged to be said, if he could join her? If they could join her? He pretended that he still had interest in being some kind of leader for this group. He pretended that he thought he still could hold such a position.

What he'd really thought was that he wanted to join her and hand over, without pomp and circumstance, the reins that had been thrust into his hands.

But he hadn't figured out how to say that to her yet because he hadn't worked out how to speak to her—how to really speak to her—when he knew that the last _real_ words he'd said to her burned inside of her as hot as they burned in his own mind.

_He'd blamed her too. She'd been just another on a long list of people that he'd blamed._

_He'd used them to convince others that he was the good guy. He'd used them to convince himself that he was the good guy._

_He'd used them to cover up, at the very least, everything he'd felt about his own potential failure—a failure he felt was upon him now._

Before he'd made it out of Atlanta he'd blamed Merle for the uproar with Walkers and people alike. His first villain and his first victim, handcuffed to a roof. He'd left him there, walking away from his problems, in the care of T-Dog. And T-Dog had dropped the key. It was an accident. It was an unfortunate, life changing accident.

And that was fine, as long as it wasn't Rick's accident.

He'd blamed the group, essentially, for that first breach on the safety of their camp. The one that had cost lives at the rock quarry. They weren't doing things right. They weren't thinking ahead. They weren't living the way that people had to live these days in order to survive.

He was going to be their savior, when really he often felt like he was using them to save himself.

He could blame Otis for ills his son suffered. He could blame Sophia for running into the woods. He could blame Randall for heightening the conflict between himself and his best friend. He could blame Hershel for not being more prepared for the herd that would descend upon them at the farm.

He could blame Shane for Lori and Lori for Shane.

He could blame _those prisoners_ for keeping the prison from being as safe as it should have been and for leading to the death of T-Dog.

And for making him lose Lori—the moment he realized that maybe, just maybe, he'd been blaming her instead of taking even a moment to consider his own position in everything. Maybe he'd failed to realize how he'd changed.

Andrea, Michonne, Merle again, the Governor—the list went on. Every time the road sloped sharply downhill, he had someone to blame. There was always someone he managed to point at and say that, without their involvement, he might have made things work. He might have made things better. It wasn't him. It was never him.

It wasn't true that the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

So he'd blamed _her_ too.

When the virus hit and they were fighting something entirely out of their control? He'd felt helpless. He'd felt like it was all crumbling. He knew now that he was hiding then. He was hiding behind the "council" and hiding behind his "temporary retirement" of sorts. He was hiding from responsibility.

But he had never really wanted to give it up.

Because as much as he hated being a leader? As much as it kept him awake at night and he doubted that he truly had the ability to do what he claimed he could do?

He hated the idea of truly handing it over to another soul.

She'd killed them. She'd claimed that she was putting them down. She was putting them out of their misery. She was ending it before they had to simply suffer through the agony of drowning in their own blood the way that many of the others that succumbed to the virus on their own had done.

But in that moment?

Rick had been absolutely terrified. He was terrified because he realized that something like that? It was a hard call to make. It was a horrifying call to make.

And it was one that he probably never would have been able to make and go through with—because he would have had no one to pass it to. The weight would be entirely his to carry. He wouldn't have wanted to shoulder such a load alone.

But she'd done it.

And then she'd been terrifying to him.

Because this was not the woman that he thought he knew.

Or, rather, she was and she wasn't.

The moment that he'd even had the slightest idea that it was her, he'd immediately been positive that it was her. She wanted, and he knew it, to keep the virus from spreading. She wanted to save as many lives as possible, even if that meant docking a few minutes from someone here or there whose continued existence might cause more problems.

_We bury the ones we love._

But she'd burned their bodies black. All on her own. At first glance? It appeared she'd tried to burn away the evidence. She'd really tried to burn away the infection.

Burying them would have been planting the disease to fester in the soil. Burying them would have been begging for polluted water and food supplies. He'd held the burning against her almost as much as the murder itself—and then Hershel had suggested doing the very same thing with the bodies that they removed after she was gone.

_She'd been gone because of him._

He had tried to give himself a clear conscience about the whole thing, but there wasn't anything that could truly wipe his mind clean.

He'd given her some food, weapons, and a car—nevermind she'd be lucky to make it ten miles in the vehicle. His conscience was clean. He'd done everything he could do for her. She was dangerous and she was unpredictable and he had to look out for the good of the group. He was doing it, truthfully, for her own good, because if he found out? Tyreese would kill her. If they found out? Daryl, Maggie, Glenn? Any of them? They would want her dead for it. If they banished her? They'd do far worse. He was doing her a favor when he left her behind because they wouldn't want her there.

_And he'd told her that. It didn't matter if they did, either, because he wouldn't want her there. He would never trust her around his children._

He'd never trust her around the boy that she'd treated as her own son every chance that she was given, even though she could have had every reason in the world to avoid him because he reminded her of her own loss.

He'd never trust her around his daughter that knew her as much as a mother as she really knew anyone else—his own daughter that she'd helped care for even before she'd come into the world.

_He didn't want her there._

_That was on him._

It was, maybe, one of the first times that he'd ever taken the full weight of any of his decisions on himself. And even then? When he'd returned to the prison? When he'd heard what Hershel had to say and he'd seen the anger and hurt in Daryl's eyes?

Even then he'd been sure to stress that he'd done the right thing, even if they might not realize it. She was a danger to them all. If she'd stayed? She would have eventually killed them all.

_She was too far gone._

Yet she had saved them from certain death at Terminus. She'd saved his life, his son's life, and the life of every other person who had ended up trapped in those train cars. She'd done it, just like she'd done everything else, with little thought about herself.

That was, perhaps, where they differed the most.

Rick felt, especially these days when he was left chewing over everything that had happened to them, that he'd barely _stopped _thinking about himself. He wondered if she'd ever _started_.

She had delivered then, even after everything that he'd said to her, safe and sound, his daughter into his arms.

_She had returned to him what he'd failed to return to her. She'd returned to him the very same child that he'd said she couldn't be trusted with._

Lately? He felt he couldn't trust himself entirely. He'd put that on her.

Since they'd left Grady Memorial Hospital, Rick had barely found it in himself to speak to her at all. The broken pieces of the story that he'd gotten from Daryl said that they'd followed the car in search of Beth—who they'd lost—because they'd seen it while near the edge of the road that night.

_While near the edge of the road beside a car with a charged battery. While Carol had just so happened to have the few things she owned on her person._

Rick knew that she'd been planning to run. She'd been planning to leave. And what reason would she have to stay? He'd told her that no one wanted her there. He'd told her that they would hate her and they would turn on her. He'd told her that she wasn't welcome with the group and that no one wanted her there.

What reason would she ever have to stay?

He'd never found the way to tell her that he'd been wrong. He'd never found the way to tell her that he was sorry. He'd never told her that he'd been as afraid of himself as he was of anything else that they'd seen or done along the way. He'd never really apologized for sinking the blade in the most tender parts of herself that she'd left vulnerable and exposed to him.

_He'd never told her that, even if he could speak for no one else, he never wanted her to leave. He only wanted her to stay._


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: I'm really happily surprised by the reaction to the first chapter. I thank you all for your support. I really appreciate it. I hope that I can do Carick justice. I guess we'll see what happens, LOL.**

**So this chapter is just another "intro" chapter that gets us into Carol's headspace a little.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol often sat alone these nights and thought about her options. She still wasn't entirely sold on whether or not she should stay with the group. This group had been her _family_. It had been, and really was, all that she had left in this world. She really did hate to be alone.

But it didn't feel the same as it once had.

The group had changed, but Carol had changed too. There were days that she didn't even feel like herself. And there were days that she laughed at that thought because it was difficult to know what "herself" even meant anymore.

What had happened with Mikka and Lizzie weighed heavy on her mind most nights. She almost felt that she'd feel better if she could tell _someone _about it. She almost felt like simply spitting out the horrors of that experience to someone else would make her feel lighter. It would get it out from inside of her.

But Tyreese didn't want to tell anyone.

Carol knew that part of his reluctance to tell a soul what had happened was that he didn't want to relive it. He simply wanted to forget it, as if that were even possible—Carol could see in his face that it weighed on him as much as it did on her. The other part, though, was the cold fear that no one would _understand._

No one would understand that it was the hardest decision that the two of them had ever made. No one would understand that neither of them wanted what happened, but that they truly believed it was the best option…it was the only option. There was the fear that no one would ever look at either of them again. It was easy to pass judgment on someone when you'd never walked in their shoes. It was easy to say how you would have done it or what they should have done when you were sure you had no chance of ever actually having to put into practice your great and powerful words of wisdom.

Carol wasn't sure she cared any longer if anyone understood or not. She was almost certain that she was tired of explaining herself. She didn't want to _justify_ for others what she'd already had to justify for _herself_.

She was the one that had to carry the burden. She was the one that had to lie awake at night with the nightmares. And she was the one that feared that, if the final judgment she'd grown up believing in were real, she was going to have to carry this with her on that day.

She didn't feel like she needed to explain it any longer.

They already knew about Karen and David. Rick had told some. Those had told others. It was no secret anymore.

She was the murderer in their midst.

If they hated her for it, and if they held it against her, though? They were keeping quiet about it. Sometimes, on nights like this, when all was quiet and they were gathered in some small and tight space they were temporarily calling home, she would look around at everyone there and she would almost laugh to herself at their silence on the matter.

Maybe they feared she'd _kill_ them if they said anything about it. After all, Rick had promised her that they wouldn't want her there.

_He'd let her know that he wouldn't want her there._

And if everyone in the room was silent on the matter of what had happened to Karen and David, maybe it _was_ because they feared her. Or maybe it was because they understood her—and if that was the case, maybe they'd understand about Lizzie and Mikka too. Or…maybe it was simply that they were thankful to her for what happened in Terminus and considered that some sort of _making up_ for what she'd been clearly _taught _was a lapse in judgment on her part.

_Rick had never explained himself._

And Carol hadn't pressed him to say anything on the matter. She felt like everything that needed to be said had been said—and that was nothing at all.

He'd thanked her for saving them at Terminus. He'd thanked her for helping to bring Judith back to him. And then, he'd asked her if they could join her—as if she had anything to _join_ at all.

She'd intended to go to Terminus, figuring some of the group might have made their way there if they were alive. If no one was there, at least she figured it would be a safe place, at least before she learned what it really was, and she could leave Tyreese and Judith there.

That's what she'd intended to do. She'd intended to leave Tyreese and Judith and anyone else at Terminus. She'd intended to set out on her own, alone, with nothing to keep her company besides her memories and her guilt—the two blending together more than she was comfortable with at times.

And she would have made it, too, if it hadn't been for Daryl.

But he'd found her when she'd tried to make a clean get away from the group, after Terminus had forced them all together once more. She'd meant to slip away quietly and leave unnoticed. She'd figured that she could be gone for days before anyone noticed her absence, and even then, she figured that no one would bother looking for her.

_They wouldn't want her there at any rate. And she was tired of explaining herself. She didn't wish to justify anything any longer. _

But Daryl had found her and he hadn't let her leave.

In a whirlwind, they'd ended up searching for Beth before either of them had a chance to even talk about what they were doing. From there, she'd ended up in a hospital and things had happened even more chaotic way.

Just another bad and horrifying memory to add to the others. It was just more fuel for the nightmares.

Because she'd woken up, disoriented and confused, with Beth standing over her.

_And in the moment? All she could think, with some poorly placed amusement, was that she'd found Beth. She had no idea where the hell she was or what was happening. She had no idea how they were going to get out of whatever hell they were in. But she'd found Beth. _

_And now she was going to have to find a safe place for Beth before she could slip off, quietly and unnoticed, to go on about her business—because no one wanted her around._

But then, as they always seemed to do, things had spiraled out of control once more. She'd stood, as dumbfounded and horrified as anyone and everyone else there, and she'd watched as Beth had lost her life in yet another senseless event.

And she was injured.

Even now? Even with maybe two weeks under their belts since they'd left Grady Memorial? She was still healing and she knew it. Her shoulder wasn't quite right yet. Her ribs still ached, especially if she moved a certain way. She got headaches, suddenly and inexplicably, that left her feeling like she wanted to vomit. She wasn't done healing yet.

She could keep going, and she did. And she could keep her pain to herself and not dare to burden anyone else with her problems—it was an old hat to her at any rate, but she knew that she needed the extra protection that the numbers of the group offered because, left out there alone, she probably wouldn't have the physical strength and stamina to hold her own if the Walker numbers got to be too large—and she wasn't even thinking about the other horrors she might encounter.

But when she was done healing? Before they reached Virginia and this heaven that they spoke of?

She'd slip off, quietly and unnoticed. She'd be healed enough to go it alone. She'd find something else. Like Rick had said, she'd find another group.

_Because she always remembered that nobody really wanted her around._

_Rick didn't want her around._

And she figured that Daryl or Tyreese, or anyone else for that matter, who might notice her absence would get over it in no time. They were all used to losing people. These days that's what they did until they almost spent their time looking each other to try to figure out who was the one who had the closest expiration date stamped on their foreheads.

It was tragic losing someone, but after a while you simply started to go numb to the whole thing. You felt the pain, but you felt it differently. You stuffed it into some kind of pocket, deep inside yourself, to worry about later. There simply wasn't time to feel it now like you'd felt it once, in a world so long gone it belonged to the land of fairy tales and make believe, when people would allow you your grieving time.

Now there wasn't time to grieve.

They couldn't grieve their dead and they couldn't even grieve the pieces of themselves that they'd all gone losing along the way.

At least, Carol told herself as a way of comforting her anxiety about what she knew was to come, when you were alone there was no one to lose and no one to grieve for. Separating yourself meant losing it all at once. It meant grieving everything at once. And then it meant having nothing left to lose but yourself—and you wouldn't be around to grieve for yourself. No one would grieve for you.

But being alone also meant that the guilt would stop piling on. It would stop building up. Each time someone died? Each time someone was lost and you were left _standing_? It added more guilt to the pile. You didn't feel triumphant. You didn't feel like you'd cheated death. You didn't even feel like it meant that you were meant for this world when the other person, for whatever reason, simply wasn't. It felt like you had let them down. It felt like you hadn't done enough or given enough. It simply left you feeling guilty that they had lost their life and you were left standing, holding onto whatever you had left to call a life, because you had, somehow—logic didn't matter when it came to grief—let them down.

But if you were alone?

The guilt would stop because there would be no more loved ones to lose that you could feel guilty for. You would no longer stand over cold bodies and wonder if there was something you could have done differently.

Carol hated being alone. The very thought of it made her stomach churn and made her palms sweaty, but at least if she were alone, she'd know that she wasn't letting anyone down. She wasn't doing anything to harm someone else or to bring harm to them. She was simply out there, surviving.

Or she was out there waiting to die.

It was starting to feel like, in the end, that's really all surviving was. It was simply waiting for the sand to run out in the hourglass. It was just living until you died.

And she could do that alone just as well as she could do it with others.

Because even if she missed everyone here? It wouldn't matter. She missed them now and she could see their faces and hear their voices. At least if she slipped away and missed them while she was out there, on her own, it would feel more valid than missing them when she could stretch out a hand and touch them.

"Everyone should get some sleep," Rick said, his voice breaking the almost dead silence of the room they were all crowded into. It was the living room of a small house that they would leave at sun up. "Need everyone rested, alert, tomorrow."

And upon the command? People started stirring and moving toward the beds they'd made for themselves. She hummed at Daryl when he, moving with the rest of them, asked if she was coming. But she didn't move immediately, she sat there, on the floor, staring at Rick and acting out her own little moment of ignored rebellion that would leave her waiting to go to bed until _she_ decided it was time—even if it was only moments after everyone else.

Everyone took Rick's words as gospel. He was, after all, their _just_ and _fearless _leader.

Carol's heart ached at her own bitterness. It ached because of the stone casing that she'd carefully constructed to try to fit around it. It ached because even she knew that if she pretended not to care, it was nothing more than act.

_She cared very much._

And her anger toward Rick? Her anger toward everything that had happened?

It was really hurt more than anything else. Most days she lacked the ability to be truly angry.

She'd had her moments of doubt with Rick, but she'd trusted him too. She'd believed in him. He wasn't perfect, but none of them were. He was in a difficult position, even as something of a self-appointed leader, and he needed their support more than he needed their judgment. She'd always believed, if nothing else, that he _wanted_ to do the right thing, even if he fell short of the mark at times like any other human being.

And she'd loved him and counted him as a good friend. She'd counted him as someone who would love her and care for her. She'd counted on him as someone she could depend on, at least to be there if truly for nothing else—after all, even the mighty Caesar fell eventually. She'd believed Rick when he'd said he and Lori would never go anywhere without her and Sophia. And even though they'd lost Lori and Sophia? She'd believed that the sentiment still held true.

So the anger that she felt? It wasn't really anger, and she knew that. It was hurt.

_Because, after all of this? He didn't want her there. _


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**If you've never read anything of mine before, you should know that sometimes I borrow things from the comics and sometimes I borrow them from the show, but for the most part I pretty much just create the world and story that I want. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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"There's water just off the road and down that hill," Michonne said to Rick as she appeared, as quietly as she'd disappeared some time before, out of the woods that lined the road they were travelling. "I don't know how far it runs. It might be best to go ahead and fill up here. We can sanitize it later."

Rick let out a quick whistle to draw the group to a slow stop as they walked along, some lost in conversations and others lost in the worlds that their minds created for them.

When they'd slowed, he walked toward the middle of the group where Carol and Daryl, standing side by side since Daryl hardly ever let the woman out of his sight, were both waiting to hear what was going on.

"Water just down there," Rick said, pointing off in the direction that Michonne had come. "Michonne thinks it's best if we fill up here. If the creek runs out, we don't want to have to backtrack and we don't know when we'll find more."

Daryl nodded at him, quietly accepting the plan.

"If we stop now," Carol said, "then we lose fifteen…twenty minutes. This late in the day? That's a lot to spare if we want to secure some place to sleep."

Rick looked between them.

This was how it all went. Always there was some conflict. There wasn't a single decision that ever got made that was just _simple_.

It was one of the reasons they hoped this promise land they were heading toward really existed. It would mean a chance to put life on the road behind them, and that would be welcomed to anyone who had survived in a land of constantly looking over their shoulders for Walkers and people alike. It would mean putting an end to making decisions that meant one of your needs could cost you another.

They needed water. They needed to make good time to get closer to their destination. They needed a shelter to pass the night when the Walker population seemed to move the most and were the hardest to see. They needed food, but they only ate when they stopped.

Rick considered his options for a moment, entirely aware that everyone, no matter where they'd stopped, were staring at him.

They were staring at him for the answers, but they'd also blame him if he gave the wrong one and they either ended up without water or ended up spending the night in some tool shed sleeping one on top of the other while their stomachs growled in protest of three or so missed meals.

"We split up," Rick said finally. "Daryl…you can take a small group down to gather water, just enough people to carry it and keep the group safe. Carol? You and I can go up ahead with who's left. Try to find a place. Secure it."

"If we don't find you?" Daryl asked.

Rick shook his head.

"We won't go off the main road," Rick offered. "If we find something and get it secured before you show up, we'll put someone out by the road to wait. We won't be hard to find."

Daryl stared at him, finally nodded slightly that he was OK with that idea and then looked at Carol.

He always looked at her in these situations.

And even without words, Rick knew what he was asking.

_Was she going to be alright? Was it OK if he went with a group to get water while she went ahead to secure a place?_

_Was she going to be alright with Rick?_

Rick felt his stomach lurch even at the realization of what the silent exchange meant. It reminded him of how unfairly he'd treated her. It reminded him that he still hadn't really done or said anything to make it right. It would be, until he did, something like an elephant in the room. They all knew it was there, everyone could see it, but no one openly said a thing about it as if it were something you could somehow miss.

"We'll see you up the road a piece," Rick offered as soon as he saw Carol give the slight nod of approval toward Daryl.

They remained still for a moment as Daryl picked the people that would go with him and they gathered all the water containers that they could carry from every person that wore one tied, somehow, to their body. Then they started off in the direction of the recently located creek while Rick and the others headed on for a while to try and find a place to stop.

"I was hoping for house," Rick said, keeping pace beside Carol, his view of the road ahead really just that of Tyreese's back as he walked a few feet ahead carrying Judith while she slept. "Like the one we had last night. Everyone can spread out a bit."

"We can hope for whatever," Carol offered. "But on this span of road? We'll have to take what we can get. It won't be long we'll be hitting the interstate for most of the way. Stopping at night's going to cut time off our day because there won't be anything just on the road."

At least she was talking to him. Rick felt like some days that was more or less a hit or miss thing.

"Slower travel," he said. "But each mile is a mile less between us and Virginia."

She didn't respond, but she also didn't react negatively. She didn't change the pace of her steps by going forward or dropping back. She wasn't rejecting the somewhat friendly exchange of conversation between them, she simply didn't have anything to respond when he spoke about Virginia.

Rick hadn't missed that she never seemed to have anything to say when any of them spoke about Virginia.

And in a lot of ways, that made his stomach lurch slightly.

"There's no telling what we'll find when we get there," Rick said. "This great place that Noah talks about might not be there. Everyone might have left. Moved on. But even if they did, what they left behind? We might be able to build something. If it's got walls? We'll do better than we did before."

"You mean at the prison?" Carol asked, her tone empty of emotion.

"Yeah," Rick said. "Better than at the prison."

The elephant was alive and well. He walked along with them, taking up enough space that Rick almost felt crowded even in the open highway. He was almost thankful when they were stopped by the appearance of five or so Walkers that needed to be taken down because it gave him a moment to regroup and gather himself up.

There was so much he wanted to say to her. There was so much that needed to be said.

The problem was that he knew, and he knew this had always been hard for him, that it was going to require him, to a certain extent, to swallow much of his pride. He was going to have to choke it down and admit that he'd acted wrongly. He was going to have to admit that he'd done it from a place of fear, and not as much from the place of "protecting the group" that he'd said he'd done it from.

Carol wasn't going to accept any less. Not now. Not this incarnation of who she was.

The woman at the rock quarry that would have gobbled up any scrap of apology that she received from anyone and thought it was the greatest thing ever? She was gone and Rick knew it.

But that didn't mean that he was accustomed to asking forgiveness, either.

Still, he kept putting it off. He knew it needed to be done. He knew that he wanted to do it, but he kept putting it off. He made excuses to himself that he knew were excuses.

There were too many people around. It wasn't the right time. She wouldn't want to hear it in front of anyone, but there was hardly ever a chance to be alone with her because it seemed that someone was always there.

Daryl was always there.

And Daryl was important to Rick. His feelings were important to Rick. He'd seen how torn up the man was when he'd told him that she was gone. He'd seen how happy he was when she'd shown up outside of Terminus.

He might believe that Daryl was in love with her, but every time he'd hinted around about it and every time he'd more or less asked him directly, he'd gotten dismissed by Daryl.

Yet Daryl hung at her side and followed her constantly since they'd left Grady Memorial. She was always close to him and to Tyreese, both men "watching over" even when she slept like they needed to be on guard for her safety.

Maybe they were protecting her from Rick.

And he kept telling himself that he'd tell her he was sorry…but he'd do it later. He'd do it tomorrow.

Even though life these days had taught him that those were the most dangerous words that he could even dare to think. There was no promise of later and there was no promise of tomorrow.

Waiting for tomorrow had kept him from saying what he needed to say before. Eventually, though, the tomorrows ran out.

"You're looking forward to Virginia? Aren't you?" Rick asked. "Getting off the road? Getting a break from the constant strain?"

"We should try to find something tomorrow that runs," Carol said. "Some cars. We probably won't get any farther than we did last time before they die or run out of gas, but at least it cuts down on a few miles and a few days."

Rick sucked his teeth and finally reached out, catching Carol's shoulder. She stopped her steps for a moment, but it wasn't long enough to really alert those walking near them that they should stop too.

"Carol, I need to talk to you," Rick said. "I think we need to…we just need to find somewhere. We need to find some time when we can talk."

Carol stared at him, furrowed her brow, and shook her head slightly.

"What is there to talk about, Rick?" She asked.

"Carol…" Rick said.

But she kept walking then. Apparently she'd talked all that she thought she needed to at the moment. Rick, realizing that she was effectively ending even his request to chat with her about what had happened had to double step to match his pace with hers again.

She was more rigid now. It was clear in her carriage that she was tense at the very thought of speaking about it. And the worst thing was that she might not understand that he didn't want to "talk to her" to criticize her more for her actions. He wanted to "talk to her" to ask forgiveness for his own.

"Carol, please," Rick said. "Just…ten minutes? You can spare that."

"Ten minutes is a long time," Carol said. "When we don't have a roof. There's hardly any food. There's no water. We need to sleep because we're trying to walk from sun up to sun down. Ten minutes is a long time for talk these days."

He could have pointed out that most of what they did these days was walk and talk, other activities dotted in here and there, but that wasn't really what this was about. He couldn't blame her, though.

Well, he _could_, but he was tired of that. He wasn't going to put this on her, even if she was being somewhat difficult.

"Carol," Rick repeated, not letting himself be put off. "Tonight? After everything is secured? We're settled in? There's food, there's water, and there's rest ahead? I need to talk to you. I'll take my watch with you. You'd have watch anyway. I'll just take mine with you and let Daryl and Michonne take theirs together later."

"I guess you've got it all figured out, then," Carol offered. "You see that chimney? Over there? If the house it was connected to is still there, it might be best to take it for the night. It's not too far for everyone to come carrying water. And there's a good chance that we won't make somewhere else before it's too dark."

Rick wasn't sure if he felt triumphant that she was, essentially, agreeing to talk to him—even if, in a way, he was roping her into it—or if he felt slightly defeated because she acted so entirely disinterested in anything he had to say. Of course, he could convince himself that she had every right to act that way until she heard what he had to say. She had every right to feel angry with him before he apologized—and even after—but he could hope that she would soften to him once again when she heard what he had to say. She'd have hours to hear it when they took watch together.

Now, if only he actually knew what to say.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here and a little more progress as we move along.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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The porch of the cabin that they had chosen was screened in. There were gaping holes in the screen, though, that almost made it nothing more than a tattered memory of what it had once been.

All the places they stopped these days seemed haunted. They creaked and groaned because of disuse and lack of upkeep. Some of them had clearly been abandoned before the world had gone to hell, but others, like this one, had once been someone's home.

Maybe Carol was strange, but when she wandered through the houses they chose, she tried not to ever look at the photographs. She didn't want to recognize in one of them the smiling, happy faces of a family only to later, perhaps, see their ghoulish countenance on one of the creatures that had taken the life of her daughter and would, given the chance, gladly rid her of her own.

The houses seemed haunted. And it didn't matter if their ghosts were already there or if all of them, coming in off the road, tired and worn down, brought their ghosts with them—they still seemed full of _something_.

Just sitting on the porch, even, like she was doing now, reminded Carol of far more than she cared to recall. Something as simple as keeping watch could require far too much concentration on simply not giving in to certain thoughts.

Carol had only been out on the porch for "watch" for ten or fifteen minutes when Daryl came out, getting her attention with a quick touch to her arm.

"You gonna be alright?" He asked, propping her rifle on the floor beside the chair that she was sitting in and leaning it so that it rested against the wall. She immediate took it and moved it so that it was lying on the ground by her feet, easy to reach if she needed it—even though it would be the last weapon she went for, good only if nothing else would do at night.

"Fine," she said.

He bumped her arm again and she realized that he was offering something in a wrapper. It was either a candy bar or a granola bar. In the dark it was hard to tell. She hummed and shook the offer off.

"You gonna have to eat," he declared. He bumped her arm again and then dropped it into her lap. There wasn't any need in giving it back. Daryl could be hardheaded about things like that and every time she gave it back to him it would simply end up in her lap again.

"Thank you," she muttered. She accepted then the last of his offers, a bottle of water, and then he grudgingly told her goodnight.

He didn't make it in the door before Rick was coming out. She heard the springs on the door squeak as he eased it shut and put a burning lantern on the floor between them.

"House had a good stock of oil," he said. "Lamps too."

"Storm supplies," Carol said.

Rick walked around the porch a moment before he chose to sit in front of her, sitting to the side, facing her if he turned his head one way and out into the "yard" if he turned his head another.

"Seen anything?" He asked.

Carol hummed in the negative.

Rick cleared his throat loudly and pretended to be interested in the darkness beyond the porch for a moment.

They weren't likely to see anything at all. They'd chosen this cabin over one that they'd seen, passing back and forth between the two, because, even though it was smaller in size, it had a pretty sturdy wooden fence running around the outside of the yard. It wouldn't keep out a herd of any decent size, but it would keep them from being plagued by the one or two Walkers that were most likely to be stumbling about.

"I wanted to talk to you," Rick said.

"There's nothing to talk about, Rick," Carol said. "I think I've said all that I have to say. All that I want to say."

Her blood ran cold now at the mere mention of Rick wanting to talk to her. If he were to find out what happened with Lizzie and Mikka?

It was different to choose to leave on her own. If she chose to leave on her own, no matter how bad it hurt, at least she was in charge of her choices. She could decide how and she could decide when. It was different to have the power to decide.

It was different than being _banished _from Rick's kingdom.

"I meant that I wanted to talk," Rick said. "I…I never told you thank you for what you did at Terminus."

"You said thank you," Carol responded. "It was enough."

Rick made a noise that sounded almost like a choking laugh.

"No," he said. "It wasn't. I never thanked you for bringing Judith back. For saving her."

"I had help," Carol said. "I had Tyreese."

Rick hummed.

"Yeah," he said. "I've seen Tyreese in action lately. He's…uh…he's not quite the man that he used to be."

Carol swallowed.

That was true in more ways than Rick could even begin to know. Tyreese wasn't the man that he used to be. And maybe some would blame it on what had happened at the prison—what had happened to Karen and what Carol had, at least in some degree, been responsible for—but Carol knew that what happened with the girls had really taken a toll on him.

She'd seen Sophia come out of the barn. And that didn't mean that it made it easy on her, and it didn't mean that it made the nightmares any less terrible about what she'd had to do, but it had at least taught her that this world, the world they lived in now, was cruel and it was entirely void of reason or compassion.

She'd seen the cruelest that this world could be first hand. With Mikka and Lizzie? Tyreese had only just realized that there really seemed to be nothing left that made sense anymore.

He'd recover. They all recovered from the things that gave them nightmares eventually, but it would take time.

"Tyreese is fine," Carol said. "He just doesn't…like this world, Rick."

Rick hummed and Carol understood it because it would have been the same sentiment for any of them. Nobody liked this world. And if they did? They weren't the kind of people that you wanted to be around.

"What happened out there on the road? With you and Tyreese?" Rick asked.

"What had to happen," Carol said. "We survived. We kept Judith alive."

"You told him about Karen and David?" Rick asked.

Carol knew that Rick knew good and well that she'd confessed to Tyreese. Even if she hadn't confessed to Tyreese, Rick had let it be known what had happened enough that he would have found out the moment they met with the group again.

"You know I did," Carol said.

"I do," Rick responded.

Silence fell between them, but Carol still waited a few moments before she even dared to breathe normally, almost figuring that the sound of her breathing could set off some sort of reaction that she didn't exactly want to deal with at the moment. It was an irrational fear, perhaps, but that's how fears worked.

"I know you took care of Judith," Rick said when he decided it was time to break the silence. "And I never really told you how grateful I am that you brought her back safe."

Carol shifted a little in her chair, relieving the pressure on one hip from her position to shift it to the other. If they were going to hurt, she might as well make sure they hurt evenly.

"Rick, you don't have to say anything," Carol said. "OK? I love Judith. Tyreese loves Judith. We kept her safe and we brought her back. I already know you're happy about that. You're her father."

She swallowed.

"What parent wouldn't be happy to see their child again, alive and safe?" Carol asked, the question truly rhetorical in her view.

Still, just the very thought of the question stuck in her own gut. She thought, though she certainly didn't want to put words in his mouth or even expressions on his face, that Rick's countenance, or what she could see of it, changed slightly.

"What I said that day…" Rick said, drawing his words out like he wasn't sure if they were the ones that he wanted. "What I said…_that day_…when I said that I didn't want you around Carl, around Judith? I didn't mean that, Carol. It was just…in the moment. I didn't mean that."

"You're a smart man, Rick," Carol said. "You're a smart man and I don't believe, not for a minute, that you're saying you speak without thinking. When you said it, you meant it."

She sighed.

"I felt that you meant it," she added.

Rick looked at her like he'd been burned and she almost smiled to herself. Men had a way of doing that. At least, all the men that she'd ever known did. They could say and do what they wanted—and you were always supposed to accept it. Take it for what it was. If it hurt you? That was your problem. But the moment that they didn't like the sound of someone else's words? The gravest of injustices had been done to them.

Carol wasn't going to coddle him, though. Once upon a time? She would have. This wasn't the world, anymore, for coddling.

"You might have changed your mind, because of what happened at Terminus, but you meant it," Carol said.

Rick looked at her, his face looking even more drawn up in concern or worry or just simply _fatigue_ because of the fact that the light between them was so little.

"I was sorry that I said it the moment that you drove away," Rick said. He shook his head. "I was sorry that I said it even as I was saying it. I was _happy _to see you in the woods…outside Terminus? I was happy to see you before I even realized it was you that had done that. Saved us? Before I even realized you had Judith."

Carol almost felt like laughing from the feeling inside of her. Was it irony? Disbelief? Whatever it was, she had to swallow back her own humor for the moment.

"If you were so sorry—why did you let me go?" Carol asked. "After you—_you sent me away_. After I trusted you and you—told me how you felt? Why did you let me go? If you were so sorry?"

Rick stared at her. Silence fell between them while they were caught in something of a standoff. Carol fought the urge to get up and walk away. She fought the desire to go inside and call it a night and avoid looking at him looking at her like that. But she was on watch. She'd agreed to stay awake for a few hours and make sure that everyone was safe—and a good soldier doesn't leave their post. So she fought the feeling and remained seated.

Finally, though, she dropped her eyes away from him and studied the darkness around her.

"I don't know," he admitted finally. "I just—I thought it was the best thing to do. I thought that if you went back? Tyreese would kill you. I thought they might all want you dead. I thought you'd be safer, that you'd stand a better chance, out there. I—"

Once he started, it all came pouring out of him.

It was a chain of excuses. It was nothing but a stream of excuses that he'd fashioned to make himself feel better. They were excuses fashioned to keep him from carrying any of the guilt that Carol could _sense _that he felt.

He was washing himself clean, bathing in his excuses.

So Carol cut him off.

"Rick, stop," Carol said quickly. "You made that decision yourself. And you followed through with it. And you stuck to it. Whether it was that you were secure in what you decided or…or that you were too _proud_ to say you were wrong…you followed through with it. And maybe you were right. I don't think that I'm _cut out_ to be around people anymore. Least of all, Carl and Judith."

"You would do anything to keep this group safe," Rick responded. "You said it. And you proved it. You would do anything to keep them safe…Carl and Judith as well."

Carol hummed, but she didn't offer words. She couldn't at the moment and they didn't matter anyway.

"We need you in this group," Rick said. He stammered like he was going to say something else, but he backed away from it, fell silent for a moment again, and then decided to speak once more. "Carol, I need your help getting us all to Virginia. I just want us to put this behind us. I want us to work together. To be a team. All of us. And…get to Virginia. It could be a new life for all of us."

"That's where we're headed," Carol said. "As fast as we can get there."

Rick hummed and nodded, but Carol could tell that he was worked up about something. There was more going on there than Rick was saying. Ever since the beginning, ever since they'd met at the rock quarry what seemed like a hundred years ago, Rick had a certain way of acting when there was something on his mind. Carol felt like she could always tell when there was something on his mind that he wasn't saying—unfortunately she'd learned that she'd eventually find out what it was, whether she wanted to or not.

But he wasn't going to be pushed into it and she wasn't going to push.

"We'll get to Virginia," she offered. "And it'll be a new life for everyone."

Rick looked at her again and he surprised her by reaching up and resting a hand on her knee, the closest part of her body to him. He squeezed it and then rubbed the spot he'd squeezed for a second before he dropped his hand back into his lap again.

"I can count on you?" He asked. "To help…me? To help us?"

Carol swallowed again, trying to push down everything she wanted to say—trying to push down the feelings that sometimes made her want to cry when she knew it wasn't the time or place for tears.

She wanted Rick's apology, but more than that? She wanted to feel like he really meant it. Still, she knew that, as long as she wasn't willing to let her guard down and take what he offered, it was never going to feel genuine. She felt like he might still have a long way to go, if he really meant what he said about putting things behind them, but she knew that she had a long way to go too.

Every step, though, was one more toward a goal—both in their lives and in their travels on the road.

"You've always been able to count on me," Carol said.

After another moment of the silence that Carol wanted to run from now had passed, Rick spoke again.

"I know," he said. "I've…uh…I've made some mistakes. Trying to be a leader for this group. It wasn't a job that I…" He broke off before continuing again. "I just want you to know that—if you didn't already, if you'd…forgotten…if I _broke _that—you can count on me too."


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. More to come.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Rick could never have explained the feeling that he had that made him feel like he needed to keep close to Carol—at least close enough to know where she was.

Apologies had been made and they'd been accepted, at least in word. It had been a week and a half—two weeks maybe—since she'd declared that he could count on her and he'd promised that she could rely on him.

And the group had walked.

They'd walked because, one after another, every other method of transportation they'd trusted to get them from point A to point B had failed them. Gas tanks ran dry, gas went bad, batteries died, hoses broke—vehicle maintenance wasn't what it used to be when they were pulling the decaying bodies of the "owners" out of everything before they tried to strike off for a new location.

And while they'd walked?

Rick felt that both he and Carol had proven to each other, at one spot or another, that indeed they could count on each other. They had each other's backs when it came to carrying supplies and one would easily spot the other on a Walker kill without so much as a batted eye.

But there was still something of a very obvious disconnect between them in Rick's opinion. And the disconnect didn't seem to stop with them. It seemed, in general, that Carol seemed distant.

She walked, always, accompanied in some way by either Tyreese or Daryl. The two men seemed to silently communicate about when and how they would trade off keeping her company or staying at her side, but seldom did they really seem to interact with her on a deeper level than any tossed about conversation or something brought up about this Walker or that.

And, to Rick? It felt like much of the distance was owing to Carol.

She was keeping herself apart. She was keeping distance between herself and everyone else in the group. She contributed as much as she ever had, and she stepped up to fight against whatever Walkers they needed to put down, but she wasn't _taking_ anything from the group—at least emotionally.

And Rick knew that it was because of him.

The worst part of it, though, was that he wanted, not only her reconnection with the group, but her reconnection with him. He wanted to feel as at ease with her as he once had. He wanted to feel as welcome as he once had to wrap his arms around her, feel the warmth of her body against his, and simply _know _that she was there.

The sensory memory of her touch stayed with him.

He remembered the way that her body had felt, warm and _alive_ after Daryl had found her in the tombs. It had been, in some strange way, a promise to Rick that some survived—sometimes the good ones survived. And he remembered, as well, the way that her body felt against his when he'd hugged her, comforting her, when Daryl had chosen not to return to the prison—to go with Merle instead—and it had been, between them, the best exchange of comfort that he could offer her.

More than once, he'd found comfort in her and he'd done his best to offer comfort in return.

And he would be lying, to himself and to anyone he were to voice the words to, if he were to say that he'd never lie in bed at night—just after watching her come into his cell, distracted and dressed in nothing more than the old shirt that most people didn't know she used as a nightgown, to help with Judith—and think about how nice he thought it would be to offer to her, and to find in her, even more comfort than they'd already found.

But now?

Now she was distant and disconnected from them all. Now Rick felt like she lacked any true comfort anywhere…and he'd been the one to rob her of that.

And all of his apologies, whispered here and there as they walked, always a little different, did nothing to repair the damage that had been done.

Because he hadn't been fully honest. He hadn't said, really, everything that he meant to say. He hadn't truly confessed to her his feelings—all of them—and he hadn't begged her forgiveness the way that he should, the way that she deserved.

He'd held back and, as a result, she was holding back as well.

And maybe that was why he kept an eye on her. He feared, maybe, that she'd taken his words to heart and she was holding back as a result of it…and that she might do more to distance herself than she already had.

"Daryl…Daryl…" Rick called, getting the attention of the man as he walked a few feet in front of him.

Daryl dropped back, staring at Rick and clearly waiting for him to finish telling him whatever was on his mind. He likely thought it had to do with Judith needing something, with the group needing something, or with some other request—since Rick felt like he was always making demands of the members of their group, sometimes for things they couldn't even dream of supplying.

"I'm going to go up ahead," Rick said. "See just off an exit. See if there's somewhere close to stay for the night. Somewhere we can all spread out a little, maybe? Get some beds so nobody's on the floor for a night?"

Daryl stared at him.

The going ahead to look for a place wasn't very unusual. Smaller bunches of people moved faster. Smaller bunches of people didn't have to kill every Walker that they came across simply because their smell wasn't strong enough to necessarily draw the Walkers to pursue them. They could get in and get out of places with more ease.

Since they'd hit the highway, each night required them to go a little off the main "stretch" of their walking path to find somewhere to stay. Mostly they'd been staying at convenience stores and gas stations, picking the places clean as they went, but those places meant that, as far as bedding went, there wasn't much comfort offered for sleeping.

There wasn't much privacy either.

"Where the hell you gonna find something big enough for all that?" Daryl asked.

"I was thinking a motel," Rick said. "Hotel. Something. We close off the stairwells and there's only the need to secure one floor. Right off an exit? You know there has to be something. Business people travelling had to sleep."

Daryl hummed at him.

"Whatever," he said. "But you think you're going alone?"

Rick almost laughed at the challenge in Daryl's voice. It seemed, most of the time, that Daryl thought he was the only member of the group that should ever dare to go anywhere alone. Everyone else needed a buddy, but he figured he could go trotting off by himself and no one was ever supposed to be concerned.

Rick shook his head, keeping pace with Daryl.

"I'm going to take Carol," Rick said. "She's good to help with an initial sweep. Make sure it's possible to secure whatever place we choose. I'll take Michonne…and whoever she wants…to keep watch at the road. They'll let y'all know what exit we're at. We'll stop at the first place off the exit…motel or hotel whichever…and you can all come down to help clear when you get there."

Daryl hummed and then nodded his head.

"Yeah," he said. "Whatever. Carl and Judith?"

"Safer with the group," Rick responded.

And that much was true. Any time that they split, if Rick wasn't with the main part of the group, he felt better with Carl and Judith staying with the larger portion. Though a smaller group could move more quickly, and though they might draw the attention of fewer Walkers than the mass smell of a large bunch of people, the old adage rang true that there was safety in numbers.

And Rick knew that there were several people that would protect Judith, at least, with their lives because of whatever sentimental attachment they had, whether it was to Judith herself or simply to the idea of an infant in this world.

"Fine," Daryl said. He glanced up ahead of them and gestured with his head toward where Carol was walking, a little off to the side. "You ask her already?"

"She'll go," Rick said.

"You oughta ask," Daryl responded.

"She'll go," Rick replied, repeating the words with a little more emphasis.

And she would go. She always went. She did anything that was asked of her when it came to securing a place for the group and helping them all continue on. There was no doubt that she would go this time too, even if she wore the face of silently questioning Rick's decision that she wore each and every time that he asked her to accompany him alone.

He was hoping that, eventually, she would stop making the face. He was hoping that, eventually, she'd stop reminding him, though without ever saying the words, of what had happened the first time he'd ever taken her with him, alone, on some kind of excursion.

"Mmm…you better get a move on," Daryl said. "Daylight ain't gonna hold out forever."

Rick glanced at the sky and nodded at Daryl.

"I figure that the group'll probably make it two more miles," Rick said. "That'll keep you from having to rush too much and it'll allow time for Walkers. Maybe there's enough time that you can stop for water, if you see anything."

And with that, Rick considered the exchange done because it seemed clear that Daryl considered it done. Things would proceed, with the group, as they normally did. They would slowly make their way down the highway with the thought that they had two more miles to go.

Rick would take Carol, Michonne and the companion of her choosing, and all of them would travel two miles as quickly as they could without exhausting themselves. They'd take the first exit, leaving Michonne and company to mark the spot like a human X, and he and Carol would find the first accommodations that looked salvageable and start to clear.

And if they were lucky? And if things worked out the way that Rick wanted them to?

Then he and Carol would have time to talk. He'd have time to speak to her once again about everything that was on his mind and about how he worried that she wasn't accepting his apology—how he worried that he hadn't made it as sincerely as he'd meant to.

And if he was lucky? This time he'd be able to find enough resolve and enough strength within himself to be honest with the woman.

After everything? She at least deserved his honesty and his sincerity.

Leaving Daryl, Rick dropped back and found Michonne. He gave the order that she choose someone and come with him and she accepted it with the necessity of very little explanation—repetition erased the need for explanation. Then he doubled his steps to catch up with Carol and quickly told her that she was coming with him—with Michonne and, apparently, Abraham as well—while they went to find a place to stop for the night.

She offered him the same look as always, furrowed brows and slightly twisted lips, before she nodded her agreement. She changed her pace, sped up her steps, and Rick followed suit. Within in a matter of minutes, they were joined by Michonne and Abraham, and shortly after that, they were several feet ahead of the slow moving group and gaining distance on them every second.

Two miles would pass quickly. An exit wouldn't be hard to find. Accommodations were almost a guarantee and, with any luck, Walkers would be scarce.

These were day to day things. Because of their commonality, they were beginning to even lose their ability to inspire worry or concern in anyone.

Rick wasn't under any impression, then, that it was the task ahead of them of finding somewhere to stay that made his pulse pick up to a rate that was even beyond what the increased walking speed should have caused. He knew that the tinge of fear that he felt inside him at the moment was far from being Walker induced.

It was the fear of putting himself out there, in a way that he hadn't done in a very long time, and being shot down—rejected—by the person who walked, not even two feet away from him, calmly and quietly and completely unaware of the storm that was raging inside of him at the moment.

It was the fear of losing her. Of really losing her this time. And of knowing that, in the end, if it happened, he really only had himself to blame because he'd been the one to drive her away in the first place.

But, as he was learning a little more each day, the only way to conquer fear was to face it. And so he walked, pounding heart and dry throat, at her side—now one mile down, and only one more to go.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Here we go, another little chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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"We should walk back toward the highway," Carol said. "Let them know where we are."

Rick looked around him. They were standing, at this moment, in what would have once been a reception area to a hotel. It wasn't a grand hotel, not by any stretch of the imagination, and the sign that identified it as some sunny place or another was gone, but it was a hotel because all the rooms opened to the inside—and that was what had made them choose it and pass up the motel that they'd come to first when they'd dipped down the steep hill from the highway.

It had offered them no more than three Walkers. In less time than it would have once taken the people who cleaned the place to empty the garbage on the first floor, they'd dropped the three Walkers and dragged their bodies outside. Then, just for good measure, they'd barricaded the stairwell doors in case there was any chance of Walkers from higher floors somehow tumbling their way down and deciding to seek out a snack.

It wasn't the safest place they'd ever been, surely, but it was a good deal better than many of the places they'd stayed for a night. And this way, most of them would be able to actually have beds to rest. They'd even have, though no one would probably know what to do with it, more privacy than they'd had in ages.

"They'll find us," Rick assured her. "They'll be here before too long. Probably stopped for water."

Carol was clearly uncomfortable with him there, alone. She kept moving from her spot, pacing a short distance, and then returning like she didn't know what to do with herself. Her arms were crossed tight against her chest, closing him out—body language could speak volumes over what she said most of the time.

"Did you pick out a room?" Rick asked.

Carol glanced past him toward the door that led to the hallway of rooms, the place they'd call "home" for the night and then she shook her head slightly.

"I'll take watch," she said. "Probably just take the place of whoever relieves me."

"Why don't you take the night off of watch?" Rick asked.

What he really wanted to say was why didn't she take the opportunity to sleep? Why didn't she stay somewhere and seem to enjoy it, if only for a moment. She often took watch, staying up half of nearly every night, and eventually that was going to take its toll on her. It was going to take a toll on Daryl too since Rick knew that he had a tendency to stay up whenever Carol was up. He kept watch over her keeping watch.

And Rick was pretty sure that he knew why.

_He'd told her to go. He'd told her that nobody wanted her there. And now she wanted to do just that. She wanted to go. And, as it turned out, everyone wanted her there. It had only been his pride—his fear—that hadn't wanted her there, tightly wound up in a body that wanted nothing more._

"Someone has to keep watch," Carol offered.

Rick watched her as she walked over, running her hand down the side of a snack machine, searching for the way to open it and relieve it of the few stale snacks inside—treats for them.

"It doesn't always have to be you," Rick said. "Other people can keep watch. You should sleep."

He joined her by the machine, seeing her worrying over how to get it open, and pulled out the pocket knife that he carried. She stepped to the side when he gestured for her to do so and he dropped the knife into the crack where he could jimmy the lock, finally swinging the door open as nicely as if he'd had a key to the machine.

She stared at him and he chuckled.

"Part of being a police offer," he said as he folded the knife and returned it to the pocket from which it had come, "is knowing how the criminals operate."

Carol studied the door a moment.

"You know many criminals that would go after a Twix bar instead of the money?" Carol asked.

Rick reached into the machine and plucked the Twix bar in question out of the coil that held it into place. He figured, from her mention of the snack, that it must be the one that she most desired of the fare offered there. He held it out to her and she regarded it.

"I might have been more that kind of criminal myself," Rick said. "So many rebellious youths find a life fighting crime."

He thought he saw a hint of a smirk from her and he pushed the candy bar at her again until she finally accepted it and held it in her hands. She looked at the probably stale candy like it was actually made of gold instead of simply tucked inside a gold wrapper.

But she didn't open it. Instead, she tucked it into her pocket.

"Michonne likes chocolate," she commented. "She can split it with Carl."

_I couldn't even enjoy this candy bar if I thought that someone else might enjoy it more—that they might be more deserving of it._

That's what Rick heard.

He followed her when she walked toward the door of the hotel, the double doors that they'd forced open and then pushed closed again. She stood there a moment, looking out, trying to find any sign of the group that was some time behind them.

"I want to talk to you," Rick said, knowing that if he didn't find his courage now then he'd never find it. "I want to apologize…Carol…"

She looked at him, brow furrowed, and already started shaking her head.

"You already did that, didn't you?" She asked.

He almost laughed at her.

"No," he said. "No—not like I should. I haven't said everything I wanted to say. Everything I should say. Carol, I had…no right to tell you to leave. I know now that I didn't. We're family. We stick together. We take care of one another. And I don't have the right to tell anyone to leave."

Carol continued to stare at him, so seemingly unmoved at the moment that he almost wanted to reach out and shake her. He wanted something from her. Even if she refused to accept his apology, he wanted her rejection outright.

"I don't want you to leave," Rick said. "I didn't want you to leave then. I don't want you to leave now."

She shifted her weight, but it appeared that it was only to make her standing stance more comfortable. She maintained everything else exactly the same.

"Nobody wants you to leave," Rick said. "Tyreese—he watches you constantly. Daryl? He's there even when you don't know he's there."

"I always know he's there," Carol commented quietly.

Rick almost laughed again.

"So you see him," he said.

She nodded slightly.

"And I know—that you're there too," Carol said. "Or you wouldn't know that he's there."

Rick sighed.

"Don't leave?" He asked. He shook his head at her. "I'm not good at begging. I never have been. I've never been good at apologies either. Lori…she always used to say that I didn't know how to apologize and make it sound sincere. I was always—it always ended up being about me," he said, the last part striking him a little even as he said it.

It was true. Every apology he ever made, he made it more about himself than he did about the person that he was supposed to be apologizing to.

"Maybe it's not any different this time either," Rick offered when the thought ran through his mind.

"Maybe—" Carol started and then she stopped, shaking her head, but suddenly her body language had changed. She'd dropped her arms from their position of being tightly held against her chest. She was more relaxed.

"Maybe what?" Rick asked. "I want to hear what you've got to say."

"Ed was always terrible at apologies too," Carol said, her voice almost sounding like she wasn't so much responding to Rick as she was simply speaking to herself.

But those weren't comforting words at all and they weren't words that Rick wanted to hear.

"Maybe…the trick to apologizing is—you've got to mean it. You've got to mean that you want the other person to feel better. No matter how it makes you feel about yourself. No matter if…if you're forgiven or you're not. You've got to mean it because you're sorry for how they feel, not for how it makes you feel about yourself that they feel that way."

Rick nodded his head to himself. There was a lump of emotion lodged in his throat. Because he had so much that he wanted to say, but now he was struck with the question of whether or not anything that he had to say was really for Carol's benefit. Was it for her, or was it for Rick? If he begged her to promise him that she wasn't going anywhere? Who was that really for? If he told her that he wanted her back in his life. He wanted her to be his friend again…really his friend? His family? Wasn't it really for his benefit if she didn't necessarily feel the same way? And even if she did, wasn't he driven by his own selfish desires to make the request?

And if he told her anything else? If he told her things that he'd kept to himself? Feelings he'd had and thoughts he'd entertained? Were they for her?

He swallowed a moment, stewing over all of it, and nodding to himself to give himself something to do more than anything. Carol watched him for a moment, but then she turned her attention once more to watching out the door to see if she might see their group—a sign that the others had handled the last leg of the journey well and would be bringing provisions so that they might have something more filling to eat than anything they might scavenge out of the broken into snack machine.

"I uh…I…" Rick stopped and cleared his throat, fully aware of the unnatural sound of his voice when he finally decided to trust it enough to try to use it. "Carol. I'm sorry. I really am sorry. And I—"

He stopped when she looked at him, visibly sucking in a breath to wait for another self-centered apology. Her eyebrows raised slightly in preparation for her "automatic acceptance" of it.

Rick swallowed once more.

"I want you to have what you need to be happy," Rick said. "And—I want you to…live."

She chuckled lightly.

"I want to live too," she said. "Isn't that what it's all about? Survival? I suppose you were right, though—whatever happens? I'll make it, just like everyone else. Until I don't."

Rick shook his head at her.

"No," he said. "I want…I want you to _live_. That's what I want for you…for all of us…but for you too. I want you to live. Not just survive."

She stared at him then, the amusement gone from her face.

"I want that for you too," she said, her voice sincere. "I do. I want you to live. I want you to be happy. We may not find another prison, but whatever we do find? I hope that…"

She laughed to herself and then she looked at him with the lightest expression—the most sincere light expression—that he'd seen on her face in some time.

"I hope that whatever we find? Wherever it is? You get the chance to grow _something_—peas or…whatever it is. I hope you get that chance again. I want you to be happy, Rick." Carol said.

He smiled at her comment.

"What do you want?" He asked.

"For you to be happy," she responded quickly. "For—everyone to be happy."

"What do you want for you?" Rick asked.

Carol shook her head at him.

"Nobody's asked me that in so long that I don't think I could answer it," Carol said. "I don't think it would matter anyway. For now?"

She looked around.

"This'll do," she said.

She glanced back out the door in the same direction she'd been looking before.

"I see Michonne," she said. "They're coming. Help me get these doors open?"

Rick moved to help her and as he threaded his fingers with hers into the crack between the once automatic doors so that they could pry them open, they barely brushed each other.

Even her energy felt different at the moment, just from that touch. Everything about her seemed a little different, a little more familiar.

"Rick?" Carol said whenever they'd finished prying the doors open and stepped aside to allow the others to come through when they arrived in a matter of minutes. "I accept your apology—and I'm sorry too. For what it's worth."

She had no idea. She couldn't possibly fathom, at the moment, what it was worth.

And she couldn't imagine, honestly, how much was suddenly on Rick's mind now that the main concern—the concern of really feeling that she accepted his apology and was willing to forgive him—was out of the way.

But Rick already knew that he probably wouldn't sleep a wink. And, he also knew, that he was going to take possession of the last of the Twix bars that the broken into machine had to offer.

It wasn't much in the way of giving her what she wanted, and he might never be able to really give her what she wanted, especially since she claimed not to know it for herself, but it was at least a start. It was a step in the right direction.

And these days? Each step mattered—their mantra, after all, was that each step was one step more toward where they were going. And Rick supposed that didn't only have to apply to the ground that was passing beneath their feet.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Everyone was settled in for the night, or at least for the first part of the night. It had been agreed upon that Daryl would take watch at the double doors of the hotel for the first part of the night and then Rick had agreed to switch off with him. It was possible, as always, that they might not be alone for their shifts either. It was not uncommon to find someone in the group that couldn't sleep and would, for lack of anything else to do to pass the long and quiet hours, offer to sit in silence and wait for something to happen—something they all hoped wouldn't happen.

Rick had convinced Carol to take one of the hotel rooms and to actually try to sleep. She was one of the few that seemed to exist entirely on a scant amount of water, a bite or two of food, and time—and she needed to rest. She needed to be off guard for a little while.

So he'd convinced her to sleep, but more than that he'd almost commanded her to simply go in a room and be quiet, and he'd found himself backed up by some of the others.

Everyone else had welcomed the chance to sleep in real beds. They'd found enough water to offer everyone the sought after sponge baths that were the only kinds of baths they got when they were on the road, and they'd all eaten as well as their scant supply of food ever allowed, passing around treats from the vending machine as a little something extra to celebrate the idea of sleeping in comfortable beds with relatively full stomachs.

Now the hotel was quiet.

It was so quiet, in fact, that Rick almost doubted that the upper floors, blocked off from them by the barricaded stairwell doors, even had Walkers to offer. It appeared the place had been pretty well abandoned before things had gone to hell and it hadn't become a refuge for anyone in the meantime other than the few Walkers that he and Carol had taken outside when they'd arrived.

Rick left the room where Carl and Judith were both sleeping, one of the closets even offering one of the "complimentary" fold out cribs so that Judith could get a proper night's sleep too, and he made his way down the quiet hallway in the dark, following the distant flicker of the lamp that dimly lit the entrance way where Daryl was keeping watch.

"Anything?" Rick asked, letting his voice announce his presence if Daryl had been unaware of his approach.

"No," Daryl said. "Not a thing. Not too bad, considering."

"Maybe we'll get lucky," Rick said. "Maybe it'll be like that all night."

Daryl hummed.

"If it is," Rick continued, "we might consider another night here. It wouldn't be bad to stock up on more water? Go out and search the area tomorrow? We're running low on food. There's got to be some around."

Daryl hummed again.

He wasn't much for conversation when there wasn't really anything that needed to be discussed. And, at the moment, there wasn't really anything that they had to discuss. Whether or not they would stay another night and go searching for food in the morning was really depending on how little Walker attention they drew, and that was something that they wouldn't know about until the whole night had passed.

"Abraham," Daryl offered, "said he would take second watch—if you don't wanna. You took last night."

"So did you," Rick said.

"I'm alright," Daryl commented. "Can't sleep all night no way."

"Yeah," Rick responded. "Me either."

He stood there a moment and stared at Daryl as the man sat with his back against the wall, staring out into the darkness of the night.

And he lingered longer than he had to because he was hyper-aware of the fact that, in the pocket of the jeans that he was wearing, there was a candy bar that he'd been keeping hid for most of the night. And he'd thought, all through dinner and all through making the evening arrangements, that he might take it to Carol and he might offer it to her. He'd thought that he might apologize to her again—that he might never really stop apologizing—and that he might…

He wasn't even sure what he might do. But the one thing that concerned him was that, if he ever did what he truly wanted to do? If he ever confessed to her the ways that he'd thought about her and the things that he'd wanted to say to her? And if she ever, instead of finding them wildly inappropriate and throwing him out of her presence in disgust, were to respond to them favorably, in the way that he wanted? The one thing that concerned him was that he'd be overstepping some boundaries that he wasn't even one hundred percent sure were there.

He had come to count on Daryl for almost everything. He'd come to know him as someone who was steady in their loyalty, even if his temper had a tendency to flare up unexpectedly and sometimes inappropriately. He'd come to think of Daryl as someone that he could count on.

But he knew that Daryl had a lot of his own demons to contend with, a lot of which he didn't speak about and Rick could only guess about—and Rick didn't want to stir any of those up.

And Rick, like most of the people in the group, had lived in a long and perpetual confusion over whether or not there was anything between Carol and Daryl that was more than met the eye.

Because, for a long time, it had seemed that the two of them might be together. It had seemed like they might be in a relationship that was far more than casual friendship.

But that was just on the one hand.

On the other?

On the other it seemed that there was nothing there beyond mutual respect and love. Maybe there was an understanding between them that was unique to just the two of them. Maybe it was nothing more than a familial love that sometimes took on a slightly blurry appearance to eyes that saw it from the outside—like those friends that have found a love for one another that's so deep that people often mistake them for lovers, even if they never have been and never would be.

Rick didn't want to step on any toes, though, and without explicit clarification from Daryl, he might not ever know what the man intended toward Carol. Yet, he didn't quite know how to find out without having to come out and directly ask about it—knowing full well that no matter what was there it would be unlikely that it was something Daryl wanted to discuss with him—and he wasn't sure what to say at any rate. Because if he assumed that Carol might have even once thought about him the way that he'd let himself thing about her from time to time, then he was being more than a little presumptuous.

And if she refused him?

His pride didn't exactly want Daryl as a witness to that either.

It wasn't the first time that Rick had struggled with whether or not to mention anything to Daryl. However, for some time he'd managed to push it out of his mind. It was only now, with the feeling of the candy bar in his pocket and the thoughts that had been circling around his mind fresh, that he was reminded of it. It was brought back to the surface.

He found, though, that just like before he couldn't bring himself to say anything, so he didn't.

"Goodnight, Daryl," Rick said. "I'll…see you in a couple of hours."

"If you don't, that's fine too," Daryl commented without looking at him.

Rick nodded to himself. Maybe that was the response he could expect for anything. Nonchalance. It wasn't important. It didn't matter. Daryl wasn't strong inclined one way or another about it.

Maybe that's how he felt about Carol.

Regardless, Rick left him at that point and assumed that, if anything were to happen and he were to follow through with the plan he'd never followed through with before of confessing some of his feelings to Carol, she would let him know what he needed to know about her relationship with Daryl.

After all—she didn't seem the kind of woman who would cheat in a relationship with her significant other's best friend. That wasn't Carol. And even if Rick sometimes felt that he didn't know Carol, or that he didn't fully know her, he knew that much about her.

He had a strange sensation, knocking gently at the door of the room that he knew she'd chosen, like he was a doing something wrong—something he might get caught for. It was the irrational feeling that if someone caught him, they'd be catching him in the middle of some terrible act. But the mind wasn't always rational in choosing the feelings that it offered the body, and Rick knew that very well.

After a moment passed and she didn't come to the door, Rick hesitated.

Perhaps she'd already gone to bed. Maybe she'd done what he'd suggested—even if he'd doubted she'd do it when he'd made the suggestion—and she'd actually gone to bed and gone to sleep. Maybe, ironically, he was knocking now to wake her when he'd been the very one that suggested she sleep in the first place.

And what was he waking her for exactly? He didn't have a clear plan of action. He was proceeding forward with something that was based on adrenaline and _a little something else_ that even he couldn't put his finger on securely.

He didn't even know exactly what he was going to say, but he was waking her in the middle of the night to say it. Suddenly, he had the creeping sensation that had become quite normal to him lately—the sensation that he might have entirely lost his mind.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to leave his post at the door. Even if he had no idea at all what he was going to say if she were to open the door, or even if he really wanted her to open it, he couldn't make himself leave. It was as though his feet were planted in place. The thing he most wanted at the moment was to leave and go back to his room—to pretend he'd never worked up to this moment. But that was also the thing that he most dreaded doing.

He knocked again lightly at the door. If she heard him, she should open it. Walkers didn't knock on doors.

He knocked a little louder, hoping the sound didn't carry to any other room beyond the one that he was calling at.

He already determined that he wasn't going to say her name. He wasn't going to call out to her. If it came to than then he would simply accept that she was asleep and abandon entirely this whole ill thought out plan.

He knocked once more and had already, somewhat reluctantly, turned his feet to head in the direction of the room where he was supposed to be sleeping in anticipation of his upcoming watch, when he heard the sound of the clicking doorknob.

Rick turned back and found Carol standing there, brow furrowed. She clearly hadn't been sleeping. Beyond her, in the room, a lamp was burning.

"Rick?" She asked. "What is it? Is something wrong?"

Rick felt his pulse kick up a notch.

Now he didn't have the chance to go running in the other direction, not even if he decided he wanted to. He had to simply, as he'd done with everything else, go forward—face his fears.

He cleared his throat and, not sure exactly what else to say or do in the moment, shook his head to dismiss her question.

"Everything's fine," he said, keeping his voice low enough that it wouldn't carry beyond the two of them. "Can I—Carol…do you mind if I come in? Speak with you for a moment?"

She looked no less concerned, and he hoped that soon he could remedy the worry that was putting such an expression on her face, but she nodded her head slightly and pulled the door open, leaving space for him to come into the room.

He stepped inside, offering a quiet thanks as he did. And, as she closed the door behind him and fully welcomed him into her, although temporary, private space, he hoped he hadn't made a mistake that was going to take them well into the land of one step forward and two steps back.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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"What's wrong?" Carol asked.

She was standing there, one arm crossed across her chest now and the other hanging low in the greatest state of being "dressed" for bed as any of them really achieved these days.

For the most part, everywhere they went they were forced to all sleep communally. They were, essentially, almost always sleeping one next to the other until most of them considered it "getting ready for bed" to simply take their boots off—and many of them didn't even indulge in that much comfort.

Even in the hotel, Rick had only gone so far as to take off his shirt, his boots would wait.

Carol had come out of her extra layers and had already peeled off her boots. She stood before him in cargo pants and a tank top—nothing more. Now he wondered, actually, if that might have been what took her so long. She might not have even been wearing that before he'd interrupted her.

He closed his eyes a moment and tried to explain to himself that he really had no right to even think about that—and he certainly didn't have a right to call to mind the mental image that he had.

He shook his head to shake the image out, but also to respond to her concern.

"Nothing's wrong, Carol," he said.

He reached in his pocket, not sure what else to do in the moment, and pulled out the candy bar that he'd been carrying around. It was likely broken now, perhaps a little melted. It was certainly no better for the wear, but it had been the only way he'd known to guarantee that no one, when they'd descended on the broken into snack machine like wolves, had gotten it.

He looked it and then offered it to her. She furrowed her brow in response.

"What?" She asked. "A candy bar?"

"For you," Rick said, laughing to himself as he realized how ridiculous the offering was. "You wanted the candy bar."

He couldn't stand to stand still in front of her any longer, so he walked a few steps toward what was a small table and chairs in the room, one of those little "sitting spaces" that hotel rooms offered that just seemed out of place when the room was small enough to make it ludicrous—as ridiculous, even, as giving someone a candy bar as a genuine gift.

"Carol—the candy bar? It's just like you. It's like you've…always been. And I actually thought…I actually worried…that part of you had gone somewhere…but it's still there. You wanted it, but you'd rather someone else have it because they…might want it more."

Carol walked around him, searching out his face again. She tossed the candy bar at the very table that he was finding its twin in ridiculousness.

"It's not that I don't want it," Carol said. "It's that I don't need it."

She pulled out one of the chairs that Rick was just thinking that nobody ever used and sat in it, staring at the candy bar she'd put on the table.

"It's not about wanting things these days," Carol said. "It's about what you need. What you have to have. It's about survival. Not—not about candy bars."

Rick pulled out the other chair and sat in it so that they were more comfortably at face level. He moved it close to her, under the pretext of having a conversation, until their knees were barely brushing one another.

"If it wasn't about candy bars," Rick said, fully understanding that though they were, in theory, talking about candy bars, the idea of the candy bar in this context really stood for a good number of things not mentioned, "then why does it even matter if anyone has it? If Michonne does…Carl? Judith? If those things don't matter, then what does it even matter, Carol?"

She looked at him and her expression was almost pained. But then she dropped her eyes and she shook her head at him once more.

Rick reached and picked up the candy bar in question off the table and peeled open the wrapper. Like most of the treats that they found, the chocolate was slightly discolored from having melted and hardened probably more than once—but it would still taste relatively the same.

He removed one of the "bars" of the Twix and offered it to her.

"I want you to eat this," Rick said, almost amused at the situation. "Just—eat it. It's open now. By morning? There'll be ants and it won't be good. There's no one else to eat it. You have to or else you know that you let it go to waste. You wasted a good thing because you were—too busy trying to prove something to eat it."

She opened her mouth like she might protest, but she took the piece of chocolate from him.

"You have to eat the other," she said. "Because…really? I don't want it. It's too sweet. It's too much. All at once? I haven't—I haven't eaten anything like this in ages. It's too much. You have to eat the other half."

Rick hummed to himself and looked at the candy bar that he had, before she'd put the stipulation on it, intended to make her eat alone.

"When's the last time that you ate a candy bar?" Carol asked. "That you didn't hand it over to Carl? Or Michonne? Or even to Lori?"

Rick swallowed.

It was true. He couldn't remember the last time that he'd actually found something like this—some treat stuck here or there—and he'd decided that he would have it for himself. He would, typically, tuck it somewhere to hand to Carl the first time that he saw him. And he knew that Carl shared with Michonne, because Michonne shared with Carl, but Rick didn't keep these things for himself.

His family was more important. It mattered more to him that they got what they needed, and what they wanted fell into that, than it mattered to him if he treated himself in this hell.

"You haven't," Carol said. "But you should. If I should eat this? If I _deserve_ it, whatever that means. Then you should eat it too. So eat the other half."

Rick removed it from the wrapper and put the empty wrapper on the table. He laughed to himself over the whole situation. He felt like this was just another of those times that he didn't even know what was happening, he wasn't in control of it, but that just made it par for the course these days.

"Cheers," he offered, bringing the candy bar to his mouth and biting into it. In response, Carol did the same.

And the minute her face screwed up in the expression that it took on, he knew that she felt the same way that he did.

This Twix bar tasted nothing like he remembered the candy bars tasting. The chocolate was hard and crumbly. The whole thing was disgusting a point that he couldn't even, for the moment, choke it down and he couldn't imagine for the life of him why it was that some of the people in the group were almost ready to fight each other over things like this.

Now? He wouldn't feel at all like he was depriving himself of a thing when he handed them over.

And Carol's face said she felt the same way about it. It was screwed up, not in the ecstasy that he'd thought the first treat after such a long time might bring, but in absolute disgust. Still, she chewed through it and swallowed it down, forcing the second half of the candy bar into her mouth all at once and chewing it with the same determination as she had the first.

So Rick had nothing else to do but follow suit.

And he was thankful when she got up and, taking a swallow from her water bottle to wash the disgusting flavor out of her mouth, offered him the bottle to do the same.

"I'm sorry," he said once he'd washed the flavor out of his mouth. "I am. I'm…I'm so sorry for that."

Carol laughed from where she was now sitting on the edge of the bed. It was a warm, sincere, heartfelt laugh. It sounded good. It sounded like one of the nicest things that Rick had heard in some time.

"That's one apology from you that I don't mind hearing so much," Carol offered.

Rick got up and wiped his fingers on his pants, though he doubted sincerely the old chocolate had really left much of anything behind. He came over to her.

"I'm sorry about everything—I really am," Rick said. "And I don't know…Carol? I can't even begin to really make that sound like I mean it. Because…"

"Words fall short of so many things," Carol said. "Wasn't that what Dale said? Something like that. Rick, I don't need you to apologize to me anymore. I don't. The words don't say what you want them to say and…really? They don't mean anything."

Rick nodded.

His fingertips still felt soiled and his tongue still bore the terrible memory of the candy. He wiped his fingers once more and chuckled at himself.

"I wanted to do something nice for you," he said. "I wanted…just to give you something you wanted."

Carol chuckled at that.

"It was nice," she said. "The gesture? It was a nice gesture, Rick. Even if the candy was bad. The thought behind it? Thank you for that."

The thanks was sincere. It was almost always sincere when she thanked him for anything. She was one of the few people that he'd known that, no matter how small the service or gift, had always seemed to truly appreciate what she was given. It was like she expected nothing, so anything was something great to her.

And it made him wonder, honestly, how little she'd actually been given in her life to learn to be so thankful for things that were so…paltry.

Rick scratched at his beard, more out of nervousness than out of genuine itch, and stared at her. She looked at him like she expected him to say something more. She was, very likely, waiting for him to say whatever else he had to say so that she could go to bed.

"Carol—wherever we go from here? If we find something safe? If we don't? I…want you on my side. I want you on my family's side. You're part of my family and…even if I haven't always been the best at letting you know that…I want you to know it now. I need your help."

She dropped her eyes a moment and then she looked back at him. She shook her head slightly at him and he nodded in return.

"I want your help," Rick said. "Nothing else matters. The past? All of it? Everything? Let's leave it there. But in the future? I want you to be there."

She looked a little softened by the words.

"You're important to me," Rick said. "You're important to everyone here."

She looked like she might cry, just for a moment, but then she seemed to change the emotion with the same control that she'd used to choke down the second half of the candy bar without flinching when it had made Rick want to vomit and had made her look, to begin with, like she shared his sentiment.

He had doubted her mental state once—but in just those two moments he could tell, from something so simple, that she was fully in control of her mind. And she had some amazing mental control. Perhaps, there was even more there than he could imagine.

"Fine," she said softly. She nodded her head to confirm the words. "Fine," she repeated. "If you want me there? I'll be there."

Rick nodded his thanks and mouthed the words quietly. Then, Carol started toward the door and Rick realized he was being dismissed.

As always, he was being asked to leave, and the conversation was over, when he felt it had barely begun. Still, boiling inside him, was so much that he had left to say. But it was time to say goodnight.

That's how it always seemed to go. With everyone—but especially with Carol—there was so much still left to say when the conversation seemed to have ended.

He stopped by the door, put his hand on it as if to say that he wasn't ready to be excused from her presence yet, and she furrowed her brow at him again as if to ask if there was something more—something that she hadn't anticipated.

And there was.

"Carol," Rick started, realizing he was going to have to speak, at some point, if he ever wanted the chance to say anything that he hadn't managed to say thus far, "what do you want?"

She stared at him a moment and then shook her head.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't think I have an answer to that anymore. I think one day I did, but now? I don't know. Do you know, Rick? Can you answer that?"

Rick swallowed. Yes, he could answer that. He could answer that a million different ways at any given moment of the day. But, at this moment, what he wanted was contingent upon what she wanted. And she didn't even know what she wanted.

And he thought, maybe, that was fair enough. But he wasn't going to ever get a chance at even knowing if he could have all that he wanted if she never got around to even thinking about what she wanted. So he decided that the only thing that he could do in that moment—good or bad decision, be damned—was to plant to question for her to ponder.

And without responding to her question and without giving warning, he screwed up as much courage as he might, and touched her face.

She flinched away from him for a second, but he let his hand follow her, keeping the light touch on her cheek.

And when she didn't flinch again, when, instead, she stood there looking at him, he leaned forward and brought their lips together—like he'd imagined doing more than once.

She opened her lips to him and he took the opportunity to deepen the kiss. She followed suit, sharing with him the taste of the chocolate that was a bad and lingering memory for them both. The kiss, in all fairness, was far sweeter than the chocolate had ever been—even before it had spent so much time in locked in a vending machine.

But when Rick dropped his other hand, not really even thinking about the action, around her and pulled her into him—pulled her tight against his body like he wanted her to be—she pulled away from him quickly, wide eyed and panting slightly.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly, realizing that he'd taken her acceptance of the kiss too far and he'd rushed her too much.

_It was too sweet—too fast, and too sweet, and too much at once. _

"No," she said, "no…don't be…"

Rick stood there a moment longer, his stomach churning and his face burning hot both over the kiss but also over the fear that there wouldn't be another.

"You asked me what I wanted," Rick said. He paused a momet and nodded at her. "I want you to—think about it? I want you to tell me what you want."

And without waiting for her to say anything else, mostly because he feared what she might say, he pulled the door to the hotel room open and let himself out, tossing back a half-whispered goodnight to her. And if she responded to him? He didn't hear it. The pounding of his heart was, at the moment, drowning out all other sound.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**This one is a long one, but I didn't have a place I wanted to break it so it all came together. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Rick might have once believed that he was an expert on reading Carol, but now he wasn't so sure. He'd correctly read the shift in her behavior following the discovery of what happened to Karen and David, but he realized now that he'd only partially read it correctly. Now he knew that what he was taking as "nervous upset over the thought that she might be caught for doing something that she knew was wrong" was really more that she was "upset over the fact that she'd felt driven to do something that she never wanted to have to do".

Carol wasn't bothered by the possibility of being caught. She probably wouldn't have been bothered by the thought of any punishment she might be given because of her actions. Carol was bothered because she'd hated the idea of people around her dying from a disease, possibly infecting others, and that, because of that, she'd had to do something that was terrible.

And, it seemed, that she still hadn't overcome that. There was an excess of sadness in her eyes and there was a heaviness in her movements that wasn't customary to the Carol that he'd first known at the rock quarry—even with all the weight she'd had to bear there.

But what Rick had learned, or at least _one_ of the things that he'd learned, from the whole experience, was that he wasn't as able to read Carol as he might have thought he was. She wasn't the open book that he'd imagined her to be.

And now he was almost afraid to _try _to read into anything about her.

They'd left with the sunrise to go into the town just a half mile away from the hotel. Their group had been comprised of Abraham, Daryl, Michonne, Carol, Glenn, and Rick himself. They were mostly going for must-have supplies since they, and everyone else in the group, would be required to carry all that they scavenged while they walked the road, but they'd taken more people than a simple run required simply to avoid any sticky situations with Walkers.

And really, they'd managed to do just that. There hadn't been happenings that were really remarkable in any way. The most Walkers they'd even seen at any given time had been a small "bunch" of fifteen or so that they'd "released" from the largest store they visited. No one, it seemed, had been in there since the fall had happened and everyone that _had_ been in there, at the time, was trapped inside—at least, that's what they assumed.

They'd gathered most of what they needed from just the one store and Glenn and Michonne had found a wagon and wheelbarrow so that they could carry it back to the hotel with ease.

And the whole time that they'd been out, handling the Walkers and gathering the supplies, Rick had been trying to get a read on Carol.

He'd been asking himself if she was thinking about the kiss the night before as much as he was. He'd been asking himself _what _she was thinking about the kiss.

But he wasn't as good at reading her as he might have once thought he was. And he was almost afraid to think that he was imagining every single thing that he saw there, good and bad.

Was she looking at him that way because she was thinking about it? Was it because she enjoyed it and wanted more? Or was it because she felt disturbed or threatened by the boundaries that he'd no doubt pushed? Was her distance from him during the run strategic to keep them covering both sides of any location at one time? Or was it because she felt the need to have distance between them to avoid him coming into contact with her?

Did she feel the way about him that he felt about her? Or had he only succeeded in scaring her more?

The questions, however, went unanswered because Rick didn't put his voice to them and he didn't feel like he could read her.

Rick made himself almost feel paranoid as the evening rolled on.

He was watching her, but he was hyper-aware of the fact that he was watching her. He was hyper-aware of whether or not people were noticing where his eyes kept falling, even when he tried to make sure to direct them elsewhere—even when he told himself to focus on Judith, to focus on what others were talking about, to focus on discussions about how far it might be before they reached any sort of real destination and on what they might find there—his eyes still drifted back to Carol, taking in everything about her from the way she looked to the way that she held her shoulders when she was sitting and listening to everyone talk.

And more than once, he saw her eyes flick in his direction. And when he looked away from her and then brought his eyes back? He thought he saw hers dart quickly away from him.

But he told himself that he was just imagining things. He _had_ to tell himself that because, if he read into her expressions and body language what he thought he saw there, then he'd just be disappointed if he found out later that it was a matter of him simply seeing what he _wanted _to see.

When night fell on them, though, and Abraham and Rosita took watch by the entrance of the hotel with Tyreese set to relieve them halfway through the night, and everyone began to retire to their rooms, Rick was left to seek out some kind of answer to the questions that ran through his mind. Judith put down to sleep and Carl resting with the command that he needed his sleep in case they moved on—since they hadn't fully decided if one more night to dine on rations they couldn't carry with them would do them good—Rick made several excuses to pass up and down the hallway.

He checked, that night, more things than he'd probably ever felt the need to check. One pass. Two. Three. But four surely would be a charm.

Yet just when he'd decided that he had his answer, that he knew what she'd thought of the kiss simply because she'd said nothing to him at all about it, and he'd finally started his last trip down the hall to return to his room and try to sleep, he finally got a response.

And even though he had no idea what he'd been waiting for exactly, or what he'd been expecting, he was pretty sure that he hadn't been expecting what he got.

Just as he passed her room, glancing at what he was sure would be the closed door once last time, Rick noticed that the door was ajar.

And beyond that, Carol was leaning, barely visible in the darkness—the only light being that which flowed out of the room from the lamp inside—in the doorway.

Rick stopped and stood before her, not quite sure what her presence there meant, but knowing it meant something. He realized, suddenly, that he could barely swallow for his nerves. Her face, though, looked oddly serene at the moment.

She looked almost young enough that he should have turned and gone elsewhere—it wasn't proper to look at her the way he'd been looking at her all day.

"I wondered if you would come tonight," Carol said.

"I was waiting," Rick said. "For…for permission, I guess. For…a sign. That you wanted me to come."

Carol nodded her head slightly, he heard something like a grunt from her—perhaps she was thinking about what he'd said and the sound had escaped her lips without her even knowing it. And then she stepped out of the shadow of the slightly ajar door and padded to him in two small steps. She looked at him a moment, furrowing her brow and, even in the darkness, taking back the appearance of the woman whom he'd forced to eat chocolate the night before—the woman that had been there, almost constantly, since his world, and the world of everyone else, had been turned upside down. Carol reached, catching him behind the neck, her hand cool on his skin, and she closed the distance between them, kissing him back and repaying him for the night before in full because he hadn't been expecting it.

But expecting it or not, he'd been thinking about it for some time, so he responded instinctively and dropped his arms around her, pulling her into him like he had the night before. And time time? She didn't immediately pull back. She allowed him to drag her against his body and to deepen the kiss. She allowed him to pull away only long enough to bite at her lips as though he were starving.

And then, panting, she finally pushed him away only to gesture that he could come with her, out of the hallway and potentially out of the sight of anyone who bothered to look, and come into the privacy of her room.

It was just a hotel room left abandoned since the fall of the world. But, at the moment, it felt like some kind of heaven because, even if he was afraid to let himself try to read her, he felt that even the most illiterate man on the planet could read exactly what was going on here.

It might not be love. It might not be anything, really, except lust. It might be the same animal hunger that he felt when he bit her lips—hard enough that now he felt he should apologize for his absentminded roughness—but it didn't matter.

For just this moment? It absolutely didn't matter.

When the door was closed and Carol had come back, swooping in to steal another quick kiss but not allowing it to linger like the other had before she swooped back away from him and toward the bed, Rick stood watching her.

And she watched him.

But he wasn't going to try to read her expectations.

He cleared his throat from the feeling of choking on how bad he wanted this—how bad he feared that he was going to ruin it if he wasn't careful.

"What do you want?" He asked.

She simply continued to stare at him a moment. He shifted his weight slightly from the feelings that the intensity of her gaze caused him.

"I want to give you what you want," Rick said.

But it was suddenly as though she were struck deaf and couldn't hear him. Or maybe she'd lost her voice or even turned to marble. She stood there, unmoving, in front of the bed, staring at him as though he hadn't said a thing to her.

"Carol…" he said, suddenly feeling a little concerned about the whole situation.

"I don't know," she said.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and lifted her arms in defeat before dropping them back down.

"I don't. I just don't know. I—nobody's ever asked me that before and I don't know," she said.

Rick stood and considered his options for a moment.

Knowing just what he knew about Ed, it wouldn't be hard to imagine that he had ruled the bedroom like he'd ruled the rest of his home—like he'd ruled his tent in camp those first few days before they bid the asshole farewell on his trip to the pits of hell where he most likely resided now.

And if Ed had been the only man for her? A question that he wasn't going to ask her because he didn't want to, and it didn't matter, and he didn't want to admit that Lori had really been the only one for him—if Ed had been the only one? Then it was more than likely that she was telling the truth. No one had ever asked her that.

And he couldn't force her to answer a question that she didn't know the answer to, even if he the answer to that question was of great importance to him.

He would just have to do the best he could. He would simply have to give her the best that he had to offer—and hope that it was, if not exactly what she wanted, something at least satisfying.

Rick took off the shirt he was wearing and toed out of his boots at the same time. Carol stood up from her position on the side of the bed. He unfastened his belt and noticed that, once again, she was watching him with the same intensity as before.

"Do you want _this_?" He asked.

She nodded.

"Yeah," she said. And, as if to show her dedication to the moment, she peeled off the tank top that she was wearing, revealing that she had let her bra go by the wayside some time ago.

She was already more beautiful than he'd imagined.

He pushed his jeans down and stepped out of them and immediately she matched him, but she upped the ante. All at once, and with a face more like she was ripping off a band aid, she pushed down her cargo pants and underwear at once, revealing herself to him entirely in the lamplight.

He might have said that she was unashamed, but her facial expression said otherwise. She looked more like she was presenting herself to be judged. And, if her expression was anything to go on, it looked like she was expecting a low score.

Yet Rick could barely breathe and already he was worrying that he was going to embarrass himself far too quickly because it had been longer than he might have liked, and she was even more amazing than he'd ever thought she could be.

"You're…beautiful," he said. "Incredible…so…amazing…"

And he stammered out the compliments. Those and any others that came to mind, in a steady stream while he rid himself of his underwear and came to her, kissing her and catching her around the waist. She weighed even less than he thought she would and, in a move that he'd thought would end up being a nice romantic lifting of her to the bed, he felt as though he almost threw her on there—much more roughly than intended.

But if she noticed, she didn't say anything.

He grabbed her legs, and pulled her toward him, lifting her slightly and pulling her legs apart.

And he didn't want to try to read her, but he couldn't help it. Because the face she made was an intriguing expression of something akin to fear and something akin to desire melting into one.

And it struck him.

_She knew what she wanted. She knew very well what she wanted. But she was afraid. And whether she was afraid of her own desires or afraid to ask him for what she wanted, he couldn't be sure, but he could be sure that she did know what she wanted._

So he tried to give her what she wanted. And in focusing as hard as he could on what she wanted—on how she responded to each lick, each nip, each gentle suck—he bought some relief for himself because his mind was so fully focused on her desires. He enjoyed, very much, the way that she responded to him. She was quiet, possibly afraid to let too much of her voice be heard at the moment, but she offered him quiet moans, breathy sighs, gasps and groans—all of which felt rewarding.

And she moved her body to silently request more—more of this, more of that, more this way—and Rick did his best to respond.

He stayed that way, his hands alternating from holding her hips to moving her legs from one location to another until he knew that she'd reached her climax at least twice and she was starting, from being a little overwhelmed, to pull _away_ from him.

_It was too sweet. It was too sweet, too much, too soon._

So he finally moved to join her on the bed. And while his body reveled in what it knew was coming, he returned to kissing her. He enjoyed the feelings of her hands, very tentatively, searching out his body as he was trailing his over hers. He enjoyed the light scratching on his back and the way she licked his collarbones and sucked his chest before offering hers, pushed toward him—a silent request he happily filled, for him to return the gesture.

And when he'd had all the play that he could stand, Rick asked her once more:

_Are you sure you want this?_

And she did.

So he brought them together slowly at first, trying to gauge her reactions. And when she moved her body, just as she had before, to make her silent requests—more of this, more of that—he understood that he was free to do what he pleased because, at the moment, everything he did was pleasing to her.

And he felt rewarded when she reached her peak—one he was able to see in her changing expression this time—just before he reached his, his previous attention making her not even seem to notice that he was nowhere near holding the record at the moment for the longest lasting man in the world.

When they both came down, sweaty and with the soft blanket trying to cling to their skin in places, he lie beside her a few moments.

But he didn't know, at the moment, quite what to say.

Because _thank you_ didn't seem to fit. And words of love were too far away.

This was territory that was new to Rick. And, judging from her response, new to Carol. The words, somehow, just didn't seem to be there.

So Rick asked the only thing that he could think to ask. The age old question asked by men since the beginning of time—possibly painted into cave paintings somewhere depicting things such as this.

"OK?" Rick asked.

"Mmm…good," Carol panted back at him.

And he almost laughed. Because neither of them, it appeared, was a master of language for the moment.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Good."

After a moment more had passed, and breathing wasn't quite the activity it had been before, Rick asked the only other thing that he knew to ask.

"What do you want me to do?" Rick asked. "Now?"

Carol rolled toward him, the expression she'd been wearing in the doorway back on her face for a second before there was the slight glimmer of a smile.

"I want you to stay," she said softly.


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: Another chapter and a some time with Carol.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol felt strange when she woke up. It was a disoriented feeling, almost like when a fever broke and she would wake up with the sensation of not being quite sure where she was or what time it was—or how many days had passed in a feverish state. But she hadn't had a fever and, therefore, none had broken during the night to render her out of touch with reality and caught up in such a state.

But, lying there naked in the hotel bed, only half covered by the blankets that she'd simply torn from the side of the bed, while she lie on top of them, to drape over her and keep off whatever cold the room had to offer, she knew that the night before had not been a dream. In her sleep, though, she'd almost tried to convince herself that it was.

She rolled slightly, but her bed partner for the night was gone. No doubt he'd had to return to his room. Judith would need him during the night.

And, beyond that, she was pretty sure that neither of them wanted to explain what had happened—at least, not right now. She wasn't even sure if he was clear on what had happened, because she wasn't.

Sure, she _knew_ what had happened between them _physically_. Her body felt somewhat strange and foreign to her in the after effects of it, and there was enough evidence to be one hundred percent clear on the fact that she'd made none of it up. About the physical act, she was sure.

But she wasn't sure, on another plane entirely, what had happened between them _emotionally_, or if anything had happened at all that they could both mutually agree upon. And she was sure that, if Rick had any confusion on the matter, _that_ would be where it lie as well. And if he didn't? Perhaps she could prompt him to explain things to her in some way.

Because only then would she be ready to try to explain it to anyone else who might be curious.

Carol tried, for the moment, to push all the competing thoughts out of her mind about it. She crawled out of the mess of covers that she'd slept in and made her way to the other side of the room. She took the wash cloth that she carried with her, hung over the back of the chair to dry from her "bath" the day before, and wet it with water from one of her water bottles, going to work to wash away the physical evidence of the night before. Then she gathered up her clothes, selected the cleanest items that she could find and dressed.

She had daydreamed about doing just what they'd done more than once. It wasn't entirely out of left field for her imagination. She had never really thought, though, until he'd kissed her two nights before, that he might have ever thought about the same thing.

She had always somewhat excused what he'd done in the time since she'd known him—at least all the "bad" things—by saying that he did them out of _love_. He did them out of love for his wife. He did them out of love for his son…and later his daughter. Even if they were wrong. And she wasn't under any blind impression, like some in the group may be, that Rick never did anything wrong. Right or wrong, though, he did what he did out of love.

Love wasn't always a valid excuse, and Carol knew that, but she'd used love to excuse a multitude of sins.

And, even if she knew that Ed's love probably hadn't always been as true as he said it was—as true as she wanted to convince herself it was to soothe over her own hurt—she wasn't going to say whether or not Rick's love for Lori was any more or less sincere.

_After all, not everything he'd ever done "for Lori" really seemed to be all that perfect either. _

But believing in that love—that deep, deep love—that Rick had for his wife? That had kept Carol forgiving him for the bad things he'd done along the way. It had kept her providing excuses, even if it was just to herself, for his actions.

And, maybe, in some strange way, she'd felt a little jealous of that love—even if it was a love that she'd constructed in her imagination.

After all, for all Ed's "declarations" of love, he never would have killed a man for her. He might have killed her, but he never would have killed _for _her.

She'd wondered what it was like to have a man like Rick Grimes love you as strongly as he seemed, or claimed, to love Lori.

At least, in the beginning that's what it had been. She'd wondered about what it was like to be loved with such a fierce intensity.

It wasn't until later that she'd begun to think about other things—and to almost hate herself for letting her mind drift there, where it surely didn't belong. Yet another case of right or wrong, she'd begun—somewhere along the way—to let her mind drift to what it would be like to be with a man like Rick. Was he as fiery and passionate in his lovemaking as he was in performing other acts for his _love_? Did that reflect in bed? Or was he gentle and soft and worshipping—some kind of gentle demonstration for the value he put on that which he loved?

Carol touched her lip. She could tell from brushing her fingertips over it that it was scabbed over, even if only slightly. She'd remembered tasting the blood from his first hungry bite of her lips. But she'd had no reason at all to reprimand him for it or even to request that he not repeat such an action. She'd learned the taste of her own blood quite well and she didn't mind tasting it again for a kiss that had made parts of her body feel alive when she'd begun to think that they were only there now for their most basic functions.

_He'd shown her what they were there for—at least for that one time._

It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before. Even in the few times he'd, for the sheer novelty of it if nothing else, put forth any sort of gallant effort to make the sex between them—since she really cringed to think of it as anything more—something she might find, if not pleasant, at least tolerable, Ed had pretty much fell short of the mark.

After last night? She realized just how short of the mark he had fallen—in a lot of ways.

Last night. Last night was nothing like she'd really even imagined could be real, at least not for her. Maybe it was true for other women, but she wasn't like other women. She had never, as far as she could remember, reached climax with Ed before. He'd convinced her that there was something wrong with her because of this. She had, of course, failed to point out to him that she'd never had a problem getting herself there—he wouldn't have wanted to hear that.

And she kept her "secret activities" just as what they were, secret.

But last night? There'd been nothing wrong with her except that her body had gotten overwhelmed with sensation—had almost felt like it simply didn't want anymore—before she'd wanted it to.

And Rick had surprised her.

Because the way that he'd bitten her lip in the hallway? She had expected it to be hard and fast and rough. She'd expected, honestly, to not even have the time to enjoy it. She'd almost expected not to enjoy it at all, if not quite the opposite.

She'd been afraid that the _fire_ that seemed so appealing in the realm of imagination, when put into practice, wouldn't be pleasant at all. She'd actually been afraid, when he'd thrown her onto the bed, that she was about to fully regret even letting herself get into such a situation. She'd braced herself for the worst.

So she hadn't expected that he would ask her for reassurance, and that he would do it often. She hadn't been expecting to be asked, more than once, if she was sure that she liked what was happening and if she wanted it to continue. She had never expected to really feel like, if at any moment she'd wanted him to, he would have stopped and let her be because it was her wish that they not go even one moment longer on the path that they were on.

She'd never expected to enjoy it the way that she had.

And now? She wasn't sure if she was to expect it to happen again, or if it had simply been one of those fluke things—those acts of passion that sprung up out of nowhere and disappeared back into it to be only part of memory—that they would both put behind them. After all, she didn't always consider Rick to be the most predictable man that she'd ever known—even if in some realm of her mind that had been, maybe, part of his attraction at times.

She would, however, leave the ball in Rick's court. There was nothing else to do but that.

He would let her know what he expected. If he regretted the night, or even if he wasn't interested in repeating it, it should be fairly obvious to her with a little study of his character for the day. And if he was interested in taking things farther? If he was interested, even, in another go at what they'd done? That should be fairly obvious too.

Rick could be a difficult man to read sometimes, but in the end? He was still a man. There were some things that were universal.

Sexual desire was typically one of those things.

Even if Carol had only ever actually been with Ed—subscribing to the whole antiquated idea, at which she now scoffed, that a good wife arrived to her husband's bed virginal and left it _belonging _only to him and in every sense of the word _his_—she hadn't been without her share of men who had, one way or another, made their interest known to her. And she had, on more than one occasion, paid for their interest where Ed was involved.

She assumed, then, that she'd be able to sense if Rick was interested in more or if he simply wasn't.

It was that _sense_, after all, that had led her to believe some time ago that things—things she might have thought once had a chance—would never happen with Daryl. She'd read, before, in him the possibility of something more. She had entertained, as surely as she had Rick, more than one fantasy about him and she'd certainly indulged herself with those fantasies. But, over time? She was coming to realize that there simply wasn't going to be anything that happened between them.

She felt the _desire_ was there, at least sometimes, but she felt that Daryl didn't know what to do with it. And there was too much in this world—too much to wear her out and make her tired—for her to have the desire to teach a hypothetically grown man what to do with his desire.

It was the kind of thing that, with a man like Daryl, had just as much chance of going badly as it did of going well.

And Carol wasn't really very interested in pursuing something that she knew, from the very start, had such a great potential of blowing right up in her face.

But Rick?

He was clearly the kind of man that knew what to do with his desires, when they were present. With him it was only a case of finding out if his desires, the ones he'd expressed the night before, were temporary and driven by appetite or if they were of the more long lasting variety…at least as long lasting as this world allowed, all things being relative.

And, of course, if they were of the more long lasting variety, then Carol knew there were other hurdles to cross.

After all, she hadn't yet decided entirely to stay with the group for the long-term—something that she would have to consider with a different eye were he to be proposing something more than what already was. And, on top of that, she knew she was the kind of woman who could never, even if she'd eschewed so many of her beliefs from her past lives, knowingly consider anything long-term with a man, especially a man like Rick Grimes, without being honest with him. Completely honest.

And that? Well that was a whole other matter entirely.


	11. Chapter 11

It almost felt absurd feel so happy in the world that they lived in. In fact, it felt so foreign that Rick had Judith fed and dressed had washed his own face and changed his clothes before he even really figured out what the sensation was that was coursing through his body and making him, without reason and for the first time in more time than he cared to admit, smile to himself with nothing to prompt it.

And breakfast, though "the same old thing" and served "the same old way," tasted far better than it normally did while Rick worked his way through his allotment of it.

It didn't hurt, of course, that at the moment he was stealing glances at Carol and enjoying the view as she worked and talked with Michonne, and he was feeling like he was allowed to do just that.

He was allowed to look at her.

And more than once? He caught her looking at him. And once? He caught the corners of her mouth, ever so quickly, turning up into a smile.

A smile, for him, from her—it felt so strange. It felt as out of place as all the other feelings he was having. And it was beautiful.

"Rick…Rick…Did you hear me?" Tyreese asked.

Rick turned quickly toward him. Nope. He hadn't heard him. He'd missed most of what everyone had been saying. Their voices had been turned into little more than a buzz, and that wasn't the best thing for right now either.

"What?" Rick asked.

"I was asking about tonight," Tyreese said. "Seems a shame to just leave all this food. We could use the break. We could use a chance to just—breathe."

Rick nodded his head.

Breathe. They could all use a chance to breathe. Their location seemed pretty safe. Everyone was comfortable. It wasn't a long term solution, but there really wasn't much lost if they lost another day in their progress toward the unknown.

Just one more day.

"Yeah," Rick said. "Yeah…we…uh…we'll stay the night. We'll eat out of the extra stock and save ours. Everyone gets hot water today if we can manage. Extra baths. Restock water and everyone spends the day resting."

Tyreese looked somewhat pleased with the suggestion and nodded his head along with Rick's words.

"I'll see what we can do to get the water going," Tyreese responded.

Rick nodded his acceptance of that and then watched as Tyreese walked toward the woman that he'd been looking at all day to discuss with her the fires they were burning in the empty pool fenced in behind the hotel.

And Rick caught her throw him a quick glance and another of the half smiles before she got to work organizing a plan of attack for gathering more things to burn and gathering the water that was needed, immediately in her element—directing people to get things done.

He felt, in the moment, that it was confirmed—if he hadn't been sure of it before. She was the kind of woman that Rick knew he could lead with.

She was the kind of woman that he wanted by his side.

In more ways than one.

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Breaking up extra furniture was easier than going out to gather wood if they were looking to stay in the hotel, but since they had to go out to gather water at any rate, water that they'd need to bathe, boil to carry with them, and use to wash their clothes so that they might feel at least a little clean, Carol figured it was better just to send people out in "shifts" to bring back both water and wood.

That way, the furniture they would have burned stayed in the hotel.

It wasn't, of course, that she had any particular fondness for the furnishings, but she knew that, at the rate they were planning on burning through things, they'd make it through most of what they had available just to take care of these regular tasks and prepare food. Then, if something happened and they were trapped, if they needed it for any reason, they'd be without anything to start fires.

It was better to gather wood while they could and save that surrounding them as something of a "backup" plan.

So she'd organized the shifts of people who would go out and she'd put some of the others, like Eugene and Noah, that weren't that great at "going outside" doing laundry and helping keep the fires burning to heat the water that was coming back. They were being helped, in intervals, by anyone who needed a break and didn't want to continue the trailing back and forth.

When Daryl brought a load of wood in, having unloaded it, no doubt, from the wagon outside, he dropped it hard enough that it echoed in the space. It was given to echoing, at any rate, simply because it was the bottom of a dried out pool, but there was a good deal of force behind the drop.

"Good Lord, Daryl," Carol muttered.

For a moment he almost looked amused at the noise that he'd managed to make. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out cigarette, straightening it from where it had gotten bent, and placed it between his lips.

Carol could tell, just from the slight glimmer of something in his eyes, that he was put in a better mood just by having the break, the same as all of them, but she could also tell that there might be something else there—he wanted to talk to her.

He always had a certain expression, whether he was aware of it or not, that said he wanted to talk to her. It was a look that he always got before he found a "reason" to lead her away from others.

So this time, rather than wait for him to come up with something, Carol waved her arm and signaled that she was interested in going outside of the pool area. He followed her lead and walked with her as she mounted the steps and crossed over to the little area that was something like a patio apart.

"What's up?" He asked, drawing on his cigarette.

"You tell me," Carol said. She tipped her head to the side. She wondered if he knew about last night. She wondered if he was amused by that. She could see him being in a good mood for the break, simply because of the fact that everyone needed some rest, but she felt there was something more there.

His face changed. The smile from before was gone and he looked out of the patio area, surveying the landscape that was just beyond them for a moment—two or three Walkers stumbling in the distance to ruin what might have, otherwise, been a very nice view—and then he looked back at her.

"You pulled me over here and you don't got nothin' for me to do?" He asked.

Carol nodded her head slightly.

"So you're not going to tell me what's up?" Carol asked.

He hummed, rocked on his feet—all the actions that he normally did when he was trying to stall talking to her. Carol was struck because these actions, along with a few others that hadn't made their appearance as of yet but were, undoubtedly, coming, were the types of things that had made her sure that he wasn't ever going to be prepared to take their relationship beyond what it was right now.

These were things that made her sure it was so much better to simply be his friend. And to let him be her friend.

A friend was a wonderful thing, after all, and they were precious commodities in this world.

"I'm going to—check on the laundry," Carol said, making up one of the many tasks she could involve herself in if she wanted to. Really? She was just looking for a reason to break this up before he grew any more uncomfortable with her undivided attention.

"You look happy," Daryl said. "That's all. You—look so damn happy. And over dirty ass drawers."

He chuckled to himself and looked at her, his lip curling up. There was a twitch at his eyebrow.

Carol couldn't help but smile in response.

"And you look happy too," she said. "I'm happy for that."

She started to walk off after a moment and only turned back when she heard him bark her name. She turned back to find him standing there, staring at her. But he never said anything. He was waiting for her to say something else. She knew it. He was waiting for her to tease him. He expected, because the moment was light hearted and everyone was feeling good for a split second—a snapshot of happiness—for things to be like they used to be, back when they were different people.

But it wasn't in her right now. So when she knew he wasn't going to say anything, and she knew what he expected, she simply offered him a smile—the best that she could—and she turned and headed back down into the pool area to check on things and help where she could to make a good evening for them all.

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Rick wasn't even trying to spoil the feelings he had by trying to remember the last time he felt this way. He wasn't trying to make sense of it or rationalize it. He didn't want to work through it or think about it.

All he wanted, in this moment, was to enjoy it.

And that was something that he hadn't wanted, for himself, in a very long time. Judith, washed and offered a warm bottle, in lieu of the room temperature one she was used to, along with some baby food that they'd found on their run, was the easiest to get to sleep that she'd ever been before.

Carl, however, didn't seem as keen on going to sleep as Rick might have wanted, and ignored entirely Rick's protest that he would need his rest since they'd be walking again just after sun up.

So Rick had done what any responsible father, dying to be relieve of his responsibilities for just a while, would have done and he'd offered Carl the lamp and a small reserve of comic books that he'd been carrying around—as something of a special surprise for the boy—in exchange for the simple promise that he'd read them and then go to sleep.

And consequently, that he wouldn't be bothered by Rick's absence.

"Where are you going?" Carl asked when Rick started out of the room.

"I've got a few things to take care of," Rick said. "Some—nothing serious. Just some talk about—future plans. Read those and go to sleep. I'll be back."

Carl seemed to accept the explanation easily enough and Rick wondered if it wasn't simply because he wanted some time alone himself. After all, they were always piled up under one another and Rick was under no impression that the joy that most people were finding in the hotel was that they had a chance to be alone—even if he was letting himself believe that Carl, and everyone else for that matter, only desired to be alone with their thoughts.

He—and Carol by default—were clearly the only two that wanted their "alone time" for different reasons. And that was how he'd keep from thinking anything that he simply didn't want to think at the moment.

He made his way through the hallway, fully prepared to make up some story about going for more water or for some kind of snack for Judith, if need be, but he wasn't interrupted by anyone. They were all either tucked away in their rooms or on watch, and those on watch were at a great enough distance from the main hallway that they were paying little attention to the coming and going of others.

He tapped at Carol's door, but barely had his knuckle made contact twice before she pulled it open and very nearly dragged him inside so that he closed the door after him.

Rick almost lunged at Carol, and catching her, he pulled her against him, kissing her quickly and finding the side of her mouth first before he repeated the action twice to work his way to her lips. She kissed him back and he pulled her tighter into his body, bringing his hands down to catch her and lift her body.

She responded the only way that she really could respond, at the moment, by wrapping her arms around his neck and letting her legs wrap around his body, helping him to support her. He carried her directly to the bed and rested her there, letting go of her but not removing his hands from her body, choosing instead to rub them over her form and catch the bottom of her shirt to pull it up.

But she stopped him.

And the moment she stopped him, he backed up slightly.

"What?" He asked, his breath already slightly ragged.

She shook her head gently at him.

"Not yet," she said. "We—I need to talk to you. We need to talk about this—about what this is."

Rick felt his stomach drop.

Because those were the kinds of conversations that didn't always end well. And they were the kinds of conversations that didn't end quickly—certainly not quickly enough for this to happen before their time was up and Rick would be forced to return to his room to comfort Judith.

And Rick hadn't exactly thought about this enough to feel confident trying to answer anything she might ask. He hadn't prepared for this—he'd been too wrapped up in the heat of the moment.

As reckless as it was, he'd been too wrapped up in feeling almost like a teenager. He'd kept, intact, his concerns about the group moving on, but he had lost all sense of responsibility or concern for the moment when it came to Carol and what was happening between them—whatever it actually was.

He shook his head slightly at her.

"What do you want it to be?" He asked.

"I don't know," she said, the same uncertainty that she'd expressed the night before over what she wanted in bed apparent in her voice. "What do you want?"

Rick stood there, unable to answer that question any better than she had.

If she was asking in the long term? If she was asking about what he wanted—as far down the road as the road stretched? Rick didn't know. At least, not with certainty. And he certainly didn't express, in that moment, the words that would be necessary to tell her everything that he was thinking in any way that would make sense.

He hadn't prepared for this. He needed to prepare. He needed the time that it would take to really consider it from all angles and to figure out exactly how he wanted to present things to her.

He shook his head at her.

"Right now?" He asked. "You. I just…want you. I don't have any answer beyond that. I haven't thought about anything beyond that."

He felt almost sheepish admitting it to her, but he felt like he might as well be honest with her instead of making up some kind of lie simply to appease her. After all, they weren't exactly in a world where he could just "escape" her to avoid being called out about anything he said. If that were the case, it wouldn't feel like, despite his many apologies, he still had to live with the ever-present and gnawing guilt of what had happened between them—what he'd done to her—when he'd left her alone in the cul de sac.

He didn't try to interpret the expression on her face. All that he needed to know was that she didn't look entirely displeased with what he'd said.

"Is that enough?" He asked. "I know…it isn't much. I know that…it's probably not enough. But, right now? I only know that I want you…"

Carol looked at him, glanced away, and he was sure that he'd lost her. He'd lost whatever this was, even if it didn't have a name. Even if he couldn't explain it. It was lost. It didn't need more explanation because it wouldn't matter at any rate.

She brought her eyes back to him, a hint of something slightly pained on her face. And then she nodded at him.

"It's enough," she said. "Right now? Tonight? It's enough."

Rick thought, though he could never be sure, that he understood what she was trying to say. Right now? At this moment? It was enough.

But she would be expecting more. And he was going to be sure, when next she asked it of him, that he had an answer for her. The kind of answer that he was already beginning to formulate in his mind. The kind of answer that he became even just a bit more sure of when she reached for him and pulled his face toward her for the next connection between their lips. The kind of answer that she deserved from him.

When next she asked for it?

Rick would have an answer for her.


	12. Chapter 12

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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They walked along keeping a steady pace. Without any particular place to go that they would reach by nightfall, there was hardly any reason to use what stores of energy they had on trying to keep up some kind of breakneck speed. They would eventually make it to Virginia, but not within the next few days or even weeks.

Rick walked along, carrying Judith. He tore his eyes, every now and again, from the horizon ahead of them, and glanced over those around him.

Carl tended to walk with Michonne. The two of them, at first glance, would have next to nothing in common, but it turned out that they could talk comic books for hours, and often did. They'd hash and rehash the same arguments with each other. They'd discuss how this issue was better than that one, how this illustrator did it better than other…they'd delve into "if I were directing a movie of this or that" conversations. It was something to pass the time.

And Rick was thankful that Carl had a friend in Michonne.

Ahead of him, Carol walked along not too far from Tyreese. The pair mostly walked in silence, but every now and again, Rick would see Tyreese step slightly to the side, lean toward Carol, and say something. She always responded with a nod or shake of the head and some quick response that he couldn't overhear with the distance.

It just made him think.

It made him think about how he'd watched her over breakfast, stealing looks at her more than anything, and how he'd felt almost like he was doing something illegal…something he wasn't allowed to do. Even if, realistically, he had no reason to believe he wasn't allowed to look at her.

He'd thought about how much he wished he knew what it was that was going on between them. How much he wished they'd had the conversation that they'd put off because neither of them had a solid answer to contribute to it.

He'd thought about how he wished, honestly, that he would have the—was it permission? He wished he had whatever it was that he needed to do something so entirely bold as walk over to her, over their thrown together breakfast, and kiss her. Or, if not even that, to kiss her quickly before they'd started the walk toward wherever the road took them tonight.

He didn't even have the courage, as of yet, to invite himself to walk beside her with the same level of comfort that Tyreese had. Not with everyone watching. Not with people knowing what had happened between them before and, probably, not having the ability to understand what was happening between them now.

Not that they even really seemed to know for sure what was happening.

Daryl had been somewhat looming around Rick. He'd drop back, surge forward, drop back again. His gate had taken on the somewhat _loping_ nature that it had when he was wound up about something.

Rick didn't know, exactly, what he might have to be wound up about, but it was growing more and more evident that there was something there. And it was also somewhat evident that, whatever it was, it had to do with Rick.

Unless, though, it was something of immediate concern in nature, the road wasn't a place for any kind of serious discussion or for any possible conflict. Besides slowing them down, it would disrupt everyone around them, lower the already low morale to something like rock bottom, and it would possibly draw Walkers.

So Rick allowed the man to keep up his frustrated pacing the entire time they walked and resolved, as soon as they found somewhere to pass the night, to arrange things so that they could take watch together.

Even though Rick could think of other things he'd rather do than take watch with Daryl to sort out some problem he wasn't aware of, he knew that solving this was important. He was, first and foremost, the leader—even if he hated the position—and that meant that he had to try to do his best to keep a check on everyone, even if they didn't realize what he was doing or what that might mean he was giving up of his own.

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"Don't need you to keep watch," Daryl said as Rick stepped out onto the wrap around porch of the sizeable farmhouse that they'd chosen for the night.

"You might not need me to keep watch," Rick said, "but you clearly need to talk to me. So—are you ready to tell me what's going on? Is it something I need to be concerned about?"´

Daryl made a sound that Rick could only really describe as something akin to laughter, but it wasn´t the laughter of a good, belly-busting joke.

"You and Carol?" Daryl asked.

Rick closed the distance between them on the porch and took a seat so that he could actually see Daryl well.

He hadn't realized that anyone would know anything about their nighttime escapades, but in hindsight that was probably pretty ignorant thinking on his part. The hotel wasn't sound proof. He'd heard the comings and goings of others. It was only reasonable to assume that they weren't in the only sound proof bubble of the building.

But Rick also didn't know how to respond because he didn't know, at least not for sure, what Daryl's concerns might be.

"What about Carol?" Rick asked.

The same sound. A laugh. An ironic laugh, probably.

"What are you doing?" Daryl asked.

He lit a cigarette and focused on it for a moment. As of yet, he hadn't actually looked at Rick at all during this conversation—or whatever one might choose to call the exchange.

Rick considered his answer for a moment, and before he was able to offer anything to Daryl, Daryl had spoken again, adding to his previous statement.

"You gonna throw her out again? Like garbage? Leave her by the side of the road?" Daryl asked.

Rick was struck.

It wasn't so much that he didn't think the statement was fair. He had lived over and over, in his mind, the moment when he left her in the cul de sac until it was almost clearer to his mind's eye than it had been to his real eyes on the day he'd watched her driving away.

He probably deserved whatever scrutiny he got.

What struck him was that he never really expected Daryl to be the one to call him out on it.

"No," Rick said. "I'm not."

"She don't deserve that," Daryl said, quickly and sharply. He still hadn't looked at Rick in the face.

"She doesn't," Rick agreed. "It's not like that."

The sound came again. The laugher that wasn't really laughter.

"Then what the hell's it like, man?" Daryl asked.

"To be honest?" Rick asked. "I don't know. Not exactly. I just…don't know."

Daryl turned toward him then. It was the first time that Daryl bothered to look directly at Rick. The darkness surrounding them made it difficult to tell anything about his expression. He was too covered over in shadow for Rick to get a clear read.

"You're just fuckin' with her, and you don't even know why…" Daryl commented.

That comment struck Rick too.

It struck him even more because there was some venom behind the words.

"I care about Carol," Rick said.

"You care about her enough to leave her," Daryl said. "Leave her for dead. Don't tell nobody where she is. Don't even give her a fair trial."

Daryl pushed himself up. He was on his feet much more quickly than Rick could have gained his at this point. No matter, though, because he didn't come for Rick in the way that Rick might have imagined he would. He dropped off the porch that they were occupying and started a pacing walk, back and forth, in front of the steps—the same hurried and awkward gate that he'd used on the road earlier, the same one he used whenever he was wound up about something.

Rick gained his feet too, though he didn't leave the porch, just to feel as though they were a little more even.

"I've told her I'm sorry," Rick said. "A dozen times—more than that. She knows I'm sorry."

There was no immediate comment from Daryl, but he didn't stop the nervous pacing either.

"I care about Carol. I—I haven't always made the best decisions. Not for her. Not for anyone," Rick said. "But I care about Carol. She knows that."

"Does she?" Daryl shot back from the darkness that wrapped around him now. "Does she know that? 'Cause she sure didn't seem to know it the whole time I was tryin' to make sure she didn't run off in the middle of the night! She sure didn't know it while I was tryin' to make sure she didn't get herself killed because she figured you ain't wanted her around! Didn't nobody want her around! That's what she thought! And it was you who made her think that…so does she know how much you're supposed to care about her?"

Now he sounded angry. Rick let him finish. He let him rave about whatever it was that was bothering him. That was the only way to get Daryl to calm down in the long run anyway. You just had to let him have his explosion. You had to try to keep it from getting anyone killed, of course, but you had to let him have his explosion—then you could reason with him.

"She deserves better'n that!" Daryl barked at him. "Better'n—"

He stopped abruptly. A little too abruptly. He didn't sound done, exactly.

"Better than what?" Rick pressed.

There was no response. It could be something that Daryl was going to say thought over once more, but regardless, Rick felt like he should push the man to get it out.

"Better than what, Daryl?" Rick asked again. "Better than me?"

"Better than you treated Lori," Daryl said.

Rick felt the impact of the words, but he also knew that they wouldn't have the impact that they had if it weren't for his guilt. And he did have guilt. He had more of it than Daryl knew. More than anyone knew. It was something that he hadn't talked about.

How could he argue that Carol didn't deserve that when he believed that she did? How could he argue that he wasn't the kind of man that would treat her that way when, clearly, he felt like he treated his own wife badly?

"I know," Rick said. It was the only way that he could think to respond to such a statement. "I know. She does. She deserves better than that. And—I'm going to try to give her better than that."

Daryl stopped in his frustration fueled pacing and faced Rick. He didn't say anything, so Rick was left to assume that he was thrown off guard because he'd never prepared for Rick to agree with him the slightest.

Daryl didn't know the guilt that Rick carried around—and he carried a great deal of guilt. It wasn't just for Lori or Carol. He had more guilt, some days, than he thought anyone could really manage.

"Let me ask you something, Daryl?" Rick said.

Something of a hum.

"Why do you care so much?" Rick asked. "About—me? About what happens with Carol? It's clear that it bothers you. Why does it bother you so much?"

"Carol's my friend," Daryl said.

Rick nodded his head to himself.

Yes, that much was clear. Everyone who knew the two of them knew that they were friends. They knew that they were close. They had been ever since Hershel's farm. Ever since Sophia—another overwhelming source of guilt for Rick.

"Is she just your friend?" Rick asked.

There was that laughter again. That laughter that wasn't quite laughter. But Rick was already beginning to learn what the sound meant and to be at least fairly confident that he was correct in interpreting it.

"Daryl-" Rick asked, feeling his own hesitation, but knowing that it was something that he had to ask. He had to know the answer to it. Or, at the very least, he had to know what answer it was that the other man would give him. "Do you…_love_ Carol?"


	13. Chapter 13

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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_You should talk to Daryl._

Carol had been carrying around the cryptic message from Rick all morning. She didn't know what to do with it. She didn't even know where to begin to dissect it and figure out what it might mean.

If it hadn't been for the expression on his face, the tone of his voice, and the look in his eyes—all these things combined—she might have thought it was as simple as any other piece of "direction" that they all received during a morning of packing up and preparing to move on.

But Rick's tone had made her a little uneasy. It had made her almost certain that it wasn't a conversation that she'd be having with Daryl over when they needed to organize the next supply run or how they could expect to handle the weather changes between now and when they reached—if they ever did—their destination in Virginia.

It felt much more foreboding than that.

And it almost made Carol nauseous because, naturally, she didn't care for conflict. Especially if it was conflict that could be avoided and conflict that occurred between herself and someone she cared for so much.

Still, she needed to talk to him which meant, probably, he needed to talk to her. So she gathered her courage up through the morning, set off with everyone else in the slow and dragging pace that they seemed to start every day with—a pace that got faster through the middle of the day and began to lag again as they neared the close of the day—and she walked in silence with Tyreese near her, thankfully never asking her what she might be stewing about, until she saw her chance to speak with Daryl.

He ambled along, in front of the group and off to the side, very nearly slogging through slightly muddy ditches to avoid close proximity to the group, and Carol sped up her steps and jogged to catch up with him.

"We need to talk?" Carol asked, her breath picking up slightly from the burst of exertion.

"Do we?" Daryl asked.

He visibly glanced back toward the group.

"That what Rick told you?" He asked.

"Well he told me I needed to talk to you," Carol offered. "Was he wrong?"

Daryl didn't respond verbally, but he did something of a dramatic shrug and missed a step as he kicked at the ground below his feet to punish it for whatever was going through his mind. Instinctively, Carol reached a hand out as though she could stop him from falling in the same manner that she might have caught Sophia a time or two when the girl stumbled near her.

But she didn't have to catch him and he didn't fall. He was surer on his feet than most and one missed step, especially when he saw it coming, wasn't going to take him to his knees.

"What you doing with him?" Daryl asked.

His voice didn't sound as much accusatory as it simply sounded tired. And Carol felt her stomach churn. Immediately she knew what he was talking about. Immediately it hit her that he was aware of what was happening between she and Rick—even if they weren't entirely sure themselves. He knew, at least, as much as she did.

And it felt, at the moment, when her body tensed like she was going to have to confess some infidelity to the man, even though there was no infidelity.

She loved Daryl. She knew that. She loved him very much and cared for him deeply. And, if he'd come to her bed? If he'd been the one knocking at her door and requesting—and she wasn't even sure she'd have required the words, just the action—something more with her? She knew that she would have given everything she had over to him.

But he'd never come. And he never was coming.

And if he came now? She would feel as though it were nothing more than some kind of competition—some tale as old as time between men that would war over women—whether or not it was the case. And the last thing that Carol wanted was to be a trophy to be won.

She'd already been an _object _to someone. She didn't want to feel like that again. She didn't want to be a possession. She didn't even wish to be treated as a _prized possession_. So she certainly didn't want to be a _prize to be won_.

The one thing she was sure of, no matter what happened or didn't happen between she and Rick, was that she wanted to be treated like a person. If that wasn't in the cards, then it could end right away and she'd be fine with it.

And even though she doubted, in some place inside her, that she would become any kind of prize to be fought for—or that Daryl was even capable of feeling that way about her—she knew that now her own mind would be set against any of his advances. It would be something she created, perhaps, but it would be something that she couldn't overcome.

"I don't know," she said finally.

Daryl looked at her, brow furrowed. His features gave way to a quick second of amusement and then returned to their concerned expression.

"You don't know what the hell you doing?" He asked.

"Literally?" Carol responded. "I know what I'm doing. Beyond that? I don't think I'm ready to answer that question."

Daryl stepped closer to her, almost touching her, and he rushed his steps forward one or two more as though to put a few feet more between them and the group ambling at some distance, already, behind them. Carol naturally matched him and kept the proximity between them that he'd established.

"You've said to me before—in some words—he ain't stable," Daryl said.

Carol swallowed.

She had said that. She believed that, honestly. Rick wasn't stable. He probably offered no more stability than attempting to stand on a table with four loose legs. He hadn't handled what happened to Lori. It wasn't even that Carol could say that he hadn't handled it _well_. He simply hadn't handled it.

And she wasn't a teenage dreamer that believed that she could fix that for him. That was something he was going to have to handle himself. Maybe she'd be there with him. Maybe she could be there for him. But at the end of the day it was his burden to shoulder and they were his emotions to work through. Carol wasn't able to fix that for him.

Ed had taught her, after all, that the belief that you can fix anyone is a foolish belief.

"He's not stable," Carol ceded. "But—I don't know if anyone is anymore."

Daryl looked at her, the intent stare that he had for a moment given to her, and then he dropped his gaze back to watch what his dirty boots looked like as they scuffed along the asphalt.

"I know that I'm not trying to fix him," Carol said.

Daryl hummed, still watching his boots.

"I know that—I don't expect him to fix me," Carol added, even though it was the first time that she'd really let her thoughts go that far. Even as the words fell out of her mouth, she was realizing for the first time that they were true. She was hearing them, herself, the first time that she shared them with Daryl.

Daryl hummed again, but he didn't speak. Carol let him have his silence for a moment, but at the end of that moment she decided to push him. If they were meant to talk, then that meant he had to contribute something. Otherwise, this was really nothing more than an interrogation.

"What is on your mind?" She asked. "What do you have to say—because you might as well just say it."

"It gonna change anything?" He asked after a minute.

Carol thought about it.

"Depends on what it is," she said.

He chuckled to himself, but it wasn't genuine amusement. There was something else there.

"Then it ain't gonna change nothing," he mumbled. This time, though, when he fell into silence again, Carol responded by simply staring him into submission. As they walked, she kept her eyes pegged on him, rolling them every now and again only to assure herself that she wasn't going to walk into anything, and finally he rolled his toward her.

"Fall down walkin' like that," he commented.

"You can step over me," Carol countered. "Or—" she added, hesitating a moment afterward, "you can help me up."

"Been doin' that," Daryl replied.

But he looked uncomfortable and it didn't take more than a fraction of a moment before he spoke again.

"I can't say I think it's a good idea," Daryl said. "I don't wanna see you—I don't want him hurting you."

Carol swallowed. The sentiment was genuine. It was, arguably, one of the nicest things that Daryl had really ever said to her. He could be quite reserved with his words. Part of caring for Daryl was learning to appreciate what you simply knew he meant in the silence as much as it ever was about the words.

"I don't want to get hurt," Carol said. "And I'm trying not to be stupid. But—I don't think that he wants to hurt me."

Daryl shook his head after a second.

"He don't want to do half of what he does," he commented.

That was truth too. And it was becoming more and more clear to Carol that this was something Daryl had thought about to a great extent.

"I care about Rick," Carol offered. "Even—even after—what happened? I care about Rick."

Daryl looked at her, furrowed his brow, and nodded slightly before he looked away again.

He didn't seem to have the ability to say any of the things that he had to say while looking at her, and Carol respected that.

"He cares about you too," Daryl said.

Carol felt surprised by the revelation of Rick's feelings by Daryl's words.

"How do you know?" Carol asked.

"Because I asked," Daryl responded matter of factly. "He cares about you."

"Well…" Carol said, letting out a sigh at the end because she wasn't sure, at first, what she wanted to say. "I guess that's good to know," she finished, thinking that she might not really let it go to her head as a confirmation of any kind of feeling without hearing it from Rick.

After all, there was caring about someone, and then there was _caring_ about someone—and a lot was left up to context. She hadn't even put to words yet, or fully accepted in her mind, the way she felt about Rick. She wasn't going to expect him to have given some deep and meaningful explanation of his feelings for her to Daryl.

Though, sometimes, it was easier to tell someone not involved how you felt than it was to tell the very person that you should be speaking to.

"Daryl," Carol said, "what about you?"

He looked at her. Something flashed across his face, but it might have been her projecting it there. She thought, though, that it almost looked like a second of fear or the warning of some kind of approaching panic.

She'd never asked him before, not really, and certainly not point blank, how he felt about her. Maybe that was her own fault, but she'd always felt he wasn't ready for the question.

Now she wondered if it was only that she hadn't been ready for the answer.

She couldn't dwell on that, though. Not knowing how she felt now—how she was sure that she could accept the offer of nothing more than friendship from Daryl. Because if she dwelled on it, it might simply send her spiraling into the world of "what ifs" and that was a place in which she spent far too much time already.

"Me what?" Daryl asked.

Carol swallowed.

"I care for you," she admitted. "I…" she hesitated, her brain conflicted a moment, before she continued. "I love you. I consider you—my very best friend. How do you—how does that make you feel?"

Daryl looked at her, shook his head gently, and then looked back ahead of them like there was something to study beyond the tree line and the road.

"Same," he said.

For a moment, Carol didn't say anything. She walked along, thinking over what he'd said—one word that, maybe, said a good deal.

"It's Rick…and it's you. If it makes you happy?" Daryl hesitated a moment before he said anything else, and when he did speak again, it was clear that he was leaving some of the sentiment out. "But I ain't gonna let him hurt you," Daryl finished.

And before Carol could say anything else in regard to the whole conversation, Daryl took off in a jog. She watched him. He trotted ahead to where there was a solitary Walker ambling out of the tree line. The Walker would have been fine to wait on them to get there, but she already knew it was more to escape the conversation. It was his way of saying that they'd talked, and now the talk was done in his mind.

And Carol realized that it meant, more than anything else, that she and Rick were the ones who really needed to talk.


	14. Chapter 14

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**Sorry it's taking so long. I have a lot going on in real life and I'm just trying to write things as they come naturally to me rather than pushing them just to get them out. I hope you understand. I'll try to update as soon as I can.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol sat alone in the shed, the sound of her own breathing all that she could hear for a moment.

Once upon a time? She might have been terrified to be out, at night, in the blackness of a tiny storage shed outside of a house. It would have been made even worse by the fact that there could be any number of Walkers lurking close by and she was without any way to protect herself beyond the knife that she carried and a handgun loaded with six rounds only.

But this world?

It had taken away that kind of fear for her.

She didn't even jump when she heard the crunching outside. It was the clear sound of footsteps. She trained her ears and listened more closely. There wasn't any growling. There wasn't any indication that it was a Walker. It could be, of course, but if it was then the creature wasn't aware of her presence inside the shed yet.

When the door creaked open, Carol did feel her chest tighten, but immediately she knew it wasn't a Walker and the dancing beam told her that it was him—he'd come to meet her, just as she'd asked.

And she almost laughed to herself because, in a way, she felt no better than a teenager sneaking out to meet a boy and hoping her parents didn't find out about it—except for this time it was the group that she didn't want to know what she was doing, and this time, she wasn't even sure why they were hiding it. She hoped, though, to have some sort of answer by the time they left the small space.

"It isn't the Ritz," Rick said, chuckling at the end of his own statement.

"It'll have to do," Carol said.

Rick put the camping lantern down, somewhat illuminating their space, and before Carol could say anything else, he was practically on her. He was on her, in fact, with the same hunger that he'd seemed to have the very first time they were together. She mumbled a complaint when, in his rough pushing at her to kiss her as deeply as he wanted, he pushed her harder into a wall than she really desired.

He backed off at the sound.

"Sorry," he spat. "I'm sorry—I don't know what came over me."

Carol reached a hand up and touched her lips, wondering if they might even be bleeding from the kiss.

"It's OK," she said. "Really."

He took that as permission, and she didn't tell him he was wrong, to resume the kissing. She redirected it a little, moving her body around the space that she'd seen in the daylight enough to know what was there and what wasn't, until they were closer to the small worktable that she'd come in and covered with a tarp.

As soon as she bumped against it, he pulled away and noticed what had stopped the movement she'd introduced, and he reached and lifted her, sitting her on the edge of it and stepping between her legs to resume the feverish making out. Carol pushed him away with her hands on his chest so that he was at arm's length from her.

He furrowed his brow at her.

Carol shook her head gently at him.

"Rick—this has to do. This—this shed? It has to do…" she said.

He glanced around quickly and then moved toward her once more, but he realized that when she didn't move her hands, she was saying that she wasn't done speaking to him yet.

"It'll do," he said. "It's not the nicest place, but it's not that bad. It's as clean as the house, really."

Carol made a face at him.

"I'm not disputing that one place is as clean as another these days," Carol said. "But—Rick—what are we doing? Because I think we need to be clear. If this—if it's something? Then why exactly can't we just ask for a room together?"

Rick stared at her, clearly caught off guard and without the answer to the question. Then he sighed, backed away from her just enough to give them a comfortable amount of space if they were going to talk, and shook his head.

"Carl and Judith…" he said.

Carol hummed her disapproval and shook her head before he could even finish what he'd started.

"Don't," she said. "Don't use your children against me Rick. Not again," she added, her own breath catching with the words.

He stammered like he might have a response, but he didn't come out with anything.

"What do you want, Rick?" Carol asked. "Before we get to where we're going? Before—we end up with some new life? What do you want? Leave Carl and Judith out of it for a moment."

He stared at her again and then he shook his head.

"You know I can't do that," he said. "I can't leave Carl and Judith out of it—they're everything."

Carol sat there for a moment, wondering if she should take that as his answer or not.

"I think that—if we were to decide that this is something? Then you need to talk to Carl. Judith is too young. It doesn't matter to her. Whatever happens? Whatever it might be? It's just her reality, Rick. She'll take it all as something natural. But you'll talk to Carl. But, before that? You've got to decide what you want," Carol said.

"What do you want?" He asked.

Carol shook her head.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "That doesn't matter. Like you said, you've got to think about you. You've got to—think about Carl and Judith. I don't have anyone to think about. Not anymore."

She felt an ache in her chest that wasn't foreign to her at all, but it was brought on by a number of battling emotions at the moment. It was the reminder that she was, in many ways, alone in this world. It was also the anxiety of the feeling that came when you realized that something might be ending—even if it was something that was ending before it had officially begun.

And it was the realization that no one had ever asked her what she wanted when she felt that her wants or desires were truly important enough to vocalize. There was always a reason for someone else's to be more important.

There was an ache there because she realized that she'd never truly felt that important—not even to herself.

Rick reached and put a hand on her thigh. He simply rested it there for a moment. The expression on his face said that he, too, might be dealing with some of his own issues at the moment.

"You don't want to do this?" He asked.

Carol considered it. Finally, she shook her head.

"No," she said softly. "I don't—if by this you mean—have sex with you in this shed? No, Rick. I don't."

He nodded his head slightly.

"What if my answer had been different?" He asked. "What if—what if I hadn't hesitated? What if I'd known what I wanted? What if I'd said to you that—that—I don't even know—that I wanted this to be something? Something real? Something serious?"

Carol swallowed and shook her head again.

"I don't need to answer that," she said. "Because you didn't say that and that's not what you're thinking. And—that's OK, but I'm not going to tell you it would change everything. I don't want you changing your answer because of sex. I just want your real answer."

"Lori was my first real relationship," Rick said. "My only real relationship. She was the first woman I ever loved."

Carol nodded her head slightly.

"And Ed was mine," she said. "But—thank God he's not coming back. And Lori? She was my friend. I like to think—I don't know—but I like to think that she wouldn't begrudge me this, if this is anything. And that she wouldn't hold it against you either. Not after Shane."

A pained expression crossed Rick's face. Of course it did. Shane and Lori were still a soft spot for him. Perhaps they would always be a sore spot for him. Maybe he'd always look at his daughter and wonder. At the very least he'd look at her and remember.

"I thought whatever this was, was enough," Rick said. "At least for now? At least until…"

"Until what?" Carol asked quickly.

And the truth of the matter was that she'd thought it was enough. She'd ran the gauntlet in her mind a few times and more than once she'd settled on the fact that this could be enough. It could be just what it was. There wasn't a need for definitions and there wasn't a need for more. They could simply enjoy the sexual relationship between them—stress relief among friends even—and that was enough.

But now she was realizing that, even if that was enough, she needed to know what it was. She needed to know that's all it was. One way or another, she needed to know. From there? She could decide if she was really as "fine" with it as she thought she was. But there needed to be some kind of definition there.

"Until we get somewhere?" Carol asked. "Until you make sure there's nothing better? No one better? Until Carl's eighteen? What's are we waiting for? Because I might be willing to wait, Rick, but I want to know what I'm waiting on."

He was already shaking his head at her.

"I'm not looking for someone better," he said. "It isn't about that. It's about…"

She cut him off.

"Don't tell me it's about Carl and Judith," Carol said. "Not until you've let Carl speak for himself, don't tell me it's about him. And I know—it's not about Judith."

He sighed and Carol could see something of the storm that was always raging inside him. He was conflicted. He was torn. There was more going on his mind than there would have been if he'd been able to shrink down a hurricane and hold it safely in his own skull.

"Are you afraid?" Carol asked.

He looked at her. It was quick. The flash was there and it was a quick flash, but Carol saw it when it happened. He dropped his sight quickly to look at the ground that she was almost certain he couldn't see at all in the semi-darkness.

She felt another catch in her chest. He was afraid.

Rick Grimes was afraid of her. Or he was afraid of what was happening here. But she didn't really know exactly what it was that he was afraid of.

And, suddenly, she wondered if he even knew.

She hummed at him.

"You don't need to be afraid of me," Carol said.

He shook his head slightly. It was a silent negation of the fact that he was afraid, but it was one that she wasn't buying at all.

He was a confident man, but much of his confidence was false. It was a show that he put on. Really? He was frightened.

And she thought that, maybe, if he confronted some of those fears and figured out what they were, he might figure out what he wanted to do about them. He might come closer to figuring out what was important to him.

And Carol already knew she had the patience to wait it out. After all, she'd waited for Daryl all this time—even if she'd finally realized he was never coming. She could wait for Rick to figure out what it was that he feared and what he wanted to do about it.

She pushed him enough to slide off the table. She walked to the door of the shed, pulled her knife to be prepared to make her way back through the darkness to the house, and decided to take a chance, even if it bit her in the ass one way or another, and push him a little closer into confronting those fears.

She tossed him a final parting thought as she slipped out of the shed, letting the door fall closed behind her as she finished her words to him.

"I'm going to bed, Rick," Carol said. "You—you think about things. You'll know where to find me, OK? Just—if you are waiting until you know if there's anyone else? Think ahead and be a little more careful? You've already got Carl and Judith to think about. You don't want any more on your plate."


	15. Chapter 15

**AN: Here we go, another chapter. More to come as soon as I can.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Rick stood for some time in the shed and thought about things, because there was a lot to think about.

Carol wanted an answer from him. She wanted some sort of yes or no, on or off response, and he had failed to give it to her. Instead, what he'd offered her was the explanation that he couldn't be with her—or rather that he couldn't be open about it—because of his children.

And he wasn't even sure if it was true or not.

Judith didn't know Lori. She had never known her from the outside, and she never would. Nothing remained of her mother in this world—Rick wasn't even sure if Carl still had the picture that he'd once been willing to risk life and limb to get from a café.

It wouldn't matter to Judith, and it wasn't a slight to Lori if it didn't matter to her. She'd hear about her mother, and hopefully more of it would be flattering than not, but she would never have the ability to remember her—and therefore couldn't actually miss her. The most she could do, honestly, was miss that she didn't have the chance to have the mother that some children had, a biological mother.

But there was probably not shortage of children in the world without mothers, and there was no shortage of mothers without children. Judith would have a mother.

And it could be Carol.

Judith would be happy with Carol as her mother. Rick sometimes suspected, though he never really said it, that she might believe her to be her mother at any rate.

_Even if Rick had tried to take that away from her. Away from both of them._

Carl did remember Lori, and Carl was who Rick was using as his greatest concern in all of this.

But upon further inspection, he had to ask himself if that was really fair either.

Carl remembered Lori, but he was also far past the age of looking, at least exactly, for a surrogate mother. He didn't need the kind of maternal care that he would have if he were younger—Judith's age or younger. He didn't miss Lori for those things because he wouldn't have allowed her to "baby" him at any rate, even if she were still there.

What Carl needed from a mother, perhaps, he was just as likely to find in any woman willing to offer it—and Carol and Michonne both offered it to him.

When Rick actually thought about it with no one around asking him questions—questions for which it was a quick and easy answer or excuse—he realized that it was unreasonable to think that Carl would have a problem with whatever it was that was happening between Rick and Carol. Or with whatever it was that might happen between them if Rick were to come clean and make it something openly discussed and known about.

Carol wasn't going to replace Lori, but she wasn't going to try either, and Carl was old enough to understand that. Carl was, arguably, far more grown than his years indicated.

Rick knew that it was time to stop using his children as excuses.

_She'd been right, after all. He'd used them far too many times against her._

But if he wasn't using his children against her, then he had to decide what was really going on. He had to figure out what it was, exactly, that was even making him consider using his children as some kind of excuse to throw up at her that might act as a stop sign.

_When he'd asked her to leave, it had been…_

_It had been…_

_So many things._

_But maybe, more than anything else, it had been his fear._

Right now? He was feeling afraid too, but for entirely different reasons. Right now he didn't fear a virus that might wipe out the people that he'd become responsible for. He didn't fear letting those people down or losing control over a group. He didn't fear Carol and the decisions that she seemed to be able to make—decisions that he wasn't sure he could have ever made.

But he did fear Carol, to some degree in this instance. And he did, to some degree, stand in awe of her ability to take a stand on something that seemed so complicated to him.

And he feared letting her down.

Because if he said that he wanted something more from her than the nighttime meetings that they'd had? Something more than the strictly physical hidden behind closed doors and out of the sight of others?

Then he had a certain responsibility to her, and it was one that he took seriously, even if it was one that he'd never exactly performed to the level that he'd intended to perform with Lori.

He'd let her down.

But, then again, he'd felt like she'd let him down too.

It didn't exactly make them _even_, if such a school ground mentality could be applied to something like marriage, but it did make it a little easier for him to handle the guilt that, every now and again, threatened to eat him alive.

And maybe, to some degree, he feared letting Carol down like he'd let Lori down. And maybe he feared letting Lori down, in some way, again.

But—if he didn't do anything, and if he didn't say anything? Then he might not be actively making a decision, but a decision was being made.

He was telling her, without telling her, that he didn't want anything with her beyond what they had. And, in essence, that was telling her that he didn't want anything beyond something purely physical.

Even Rick knew that it wasn't a very flattering thought—and he knew that even if she thought she could accept that, he hated to ask her to make that decision knowing what she would basically be deciding: was she OK with continuing to be with him, knowing that he wasn't thinking about her as anything more than a warm body?

And that wasn't the case. So he had to be the one to take it off the table entirely.

He had to actually say something. He had to do something.

Because, even if he didn't say anything, he was saying everything.

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Carol was surprised when there was a knock at the bedroom door of the farmhouse. She was sharing the room with Michonne, everyone basically having to double or triple up because of space, and Michonne glanced over at her from where she was sitting on the bed, reading a book.

"Expecting someone?" Michonne asked.

Carol frowned.

No, she really wasn't expecting anyone. She wasn't sure that it was fair to expect Rick, and there was no one else that she thought might have unfinished business with her tonight. However, she always seemed to be the one that people "needed" for something—can you sew this? Can you fix this? Do you know where this or that is? Do you have this whatever that I need?

"I'll get it," Carol said, the only response she gave, as more of a courtesy than anything else. Michonne was making no move to answer the door.

Carol got up from where she'd been looking at a book of her own choosing out of the bedroom's scanty library, and went, turning the cold glass knob of the old door.

Rick was standing there, his head hung slightly, his hands on hips. When she opened the door, he barely lifted his face and rolled his eyes up to look at her.

"Can we talk?" He asked.

Carol glanced slightly in Michonne's direction, but Michonne was already moving around and gathering up her things.

"I'll just…" Michonne started, clearly not having worked out where she was going or what she was going to say was her urgent calling when she was already out of her "day wear" entirely.

Rick held a hand up in her direction, so Michonne stopped, a somewhat confused look on her face.

"I'm going to ask you," Rick said, "for privacy. I'd appreciate it if you'd give us some privacy."

She started to say something, most likely along the lines of the fact that she was trying to do just that, and Rick shook his head.

"But I don't want you to pretend that you don't know what's going on here or that you didn't see or hear anything," Rick said.

He looked at Carol then and then back at Michonne, keeping his vision somewhat skipping between them when he spoke.

"I haven't talked to Carl yet—and I would like to talk to him in person—but I can do that first thing in the morning. So I'd rather you…and nobody else…say anything until I've had the chance to talk to him, and I'll do it before breakfast…but…" Rick paused, apparently trying to arrange the words he was going to say next, his vision still going between them. "But," he said when he was ready to start again, "I hope that I'm not overstepping my boundaries when I say that Carol and I have…"

And there was another pause.

Carol didn't want to put words in his mouth, and so she wouldn't offer her thoughts out loud, but she wondered if maybe his sudden hesitation to finish what she was pretty sure she could finish for him was because he didn't know what to call it.

What in the world would she even call it?

It seemed entirely ludicrous to say they were "dating". Even "seeing each other" sounded out of place in the world that they called home right now.

And some of the others, who had relationships here and there, stuck to the "old world's terminology," but it still seemed a little out of place.

"We've been…seeing each other," Rick said, finally choosing one of the terms that Carol had just run through her mind as being somewhat unusual for their circumstances.

_But, arguably, it sounded better than "we've been fucking each other without any idea what's going on or if there would be more to it". _

"Oh," Michonne said. Carol noticed, though, that her voice didn't carry even a fraction of the "surprise" that such an exclamation was supposed to carry. In fact, she didn't sound surprised at all. And she'd sounded somewhat amused when there was a knock at the door.

If they'd thought this was a secret at all, and Carol wasn't sure that she had ever actually believed it was a secret or could remain that way, Michonne was more or less proving to them that everybody already knew what was going on—whether or not they were using Rick's chosen vocabulary to describe it.

It wasn't just Daryl who knew, it was everyone. They might not be saying anything about it, but they knew.

The look on Rick's face said he might just be figuring that out for himself—or maybe he was wondering if Carl already knew what he expected to tell him the next morning.

But then Rick looked at Michonne, nodded his head slightly, and cleared his throat.

"Judith and I were rooming with Tyreese," Rick said.

"And I don't mind rooming with Tyreese," Michonne said. "And—I don't think he minds rooming with me for the night. So—I'm going to switch out with you, OK?"

Rick nodded his head again, his way of saying thank you to the woman for giving up her spot to allow him to legitimately spend the night in the room with Carol—the first night where he clearly intended not to go back to another room when things were done.

Carol felt an odd sort of twisting in her stomach at the thought of it. There were most assuredly butterflies of some sort.

She thanked Michonne quickly and quietly when the woman gathered up the things that she was taking with her, including several of the books off the shelf whose titles she likely hadn't even perused, and made her way out the room, bidding them a quiet goodnight.

Rick stepped out of the way to let Michonne pass, and his eyes followed after a moment as she went, but he didn't come into the room. He stood there in the hallway and waited, bringing his eyes back to Carol after a moment.

"Did I step out of line?" He asked.

Carol swallowed.

He was asking if he stepped out of line by saying they were "seeing each other," whatever that meant in this world—something that they'd have to work out for themselves now—and if he'd stepped out of line by assuming that's what she wanted and that they were both on board with the idea.

He was asking her if he had the right, at least in that instance because not all situations were created equal in her mind, to speak for her—if he had the right to give a name to what was happening between them or what might happen.

_Nobody had ever asked her if they had the right to speak to her. They'd simply assumed they did and they'd done it. But, neither before nor after, never had they asked her if they had the right to speak for her. _

Carol sucked in a breath, surprised to find that she might need to screw some of her courage into the sticking place for the encounter that she was sure was to come next, and she stepped back a little from her position in front of the door to the bedroom.

"No," she said. "You didn't step out of line—not then. I think—what you said? I think it was fair. Do you?"

Rick tipped his head slightly and then nodded.

"Yeah," he said. He chuckled to himself. "That's why I said it. Can—can I come in?"

Carol nodded and moved to allow him easy passage through the doorway of the old house.

"Please," she said, not sure what else to say and not sure that anything else was necessary—at least not at the moment.


	16. Chapter 16

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Rick went directly to sit on the foot of the bed, the whole frame of the old bed letting out a creak when he rested his weight there. Carol considered joining him after she closed the bedroom door, but she stopped and stood in front of him, a few feet between them, with her arms crossed across her chest.

"I didn't—uh—I didn't really expect you to come so soon," Carol said.

Rick looked at her, nodded once, and then looked back at the floor where he was, apparently, studying the woodgrain since there was nothing more there for him to examine with such careful intent.

"So soon?" He asked without looking at her for the moment. "It felt like I was out there for a while."

"Big decisions take time," Carol said. "If you're going to make the right decision. For the right reason. Are you sure you're—that you're making the right decision? For the right reason?"

Rick looked at her then.

The problem with Rick, and Carol had often thought this, was that he was a man who was capable of simultaneously being a person who overthought things far too much and of being a person who made rash decisions.

Which he was depended on something unknown to her—maybe the pull of the moon or maybe something in the water—but he could easily go either way. There seemed, often, to be no middle ground. He either seemed to be eternally unsure of how he should react to a given situation, or he reacted quickly and brashly and did the very first thing that came to his mind—only stopping later to think of the consequences.

She'd seen both sides of him at work, and at this moment, she wasn't sure which was in control.

He tipped his head to the side, nodded to himself again, and then he finally spoke, his voice giving away that maybe he was still thinking this one through.

"What's the right reason?" He asked.

Carol shook her head.

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't. But I know that the wrong reason—or, at least, the wrong reason in my opinion, would be that you're bothered that I left you in the shed. I don't want you to be here because—you're frustrated and you're—making the first decision that you can make to…"

She stopped and shook her head at him. She didn't want to put to words what she was thinking. She didn't want to say out loud that she didn't want Rick making a fast decision just because she'd turned him down for sex when that's clearly what he'd come to the shed looking for. She didn't want that to be the reason that he made any decision because it wasn't a very good reason for saying that he wanted something more meaningful between them and that he wanted everyone in the group to know about it.

Rick sighed and shook his head.

"It's not that," he said. "I know it's not that. But—I know that this world, it's not like the world that we used to live in. It hasn't been for—anybody. We're losing people. It feels like, all the time, we're just constantly—losing people. And we find something good…We found the prison. We took that prison. We shed blood, we lost lives, and we took that prison. And we had something—for a while—we had something. And then we lost it. We lose everything—especially if it's good…"

Carol felt a catch in her throat, as though she'd tried to swallow something barbed. She swallowed against it.

_She knew as well as any of them—maybe even more if than some if they were going to compare their scars—what it was to lose in this world. _

"You—uh…" Carol stopped and cleared her throat, unhappy with the way that her voice came out. "You're afraid—you think that—if we do this? If we put a name to it, and it's something good. That—that we're going to lose it?"

He looked at her and, at that moment, his expression said it all.

Carol shook her head gently at him. She shook her head because she didn't know what to say. At that moment her mind was offering her a million different things to say and her mouth was refusing to say any of them at all. All she could do, it seemed, was to shake her head.

Because she understood the fear of losing something good. She understood, too, the feeling of not even knowing if you wanted something good—because if you had it, then you'd feel the loss…a loss that almost seemed sure to come.

But at the same time, if there was anything left that was good at all in this world? It seemed hard to pass that up when it was being practically handed to you.

Carol sucked in a breath, all at once, that was so deep and so violent that it almost surprised her.

She had to tell him. She had to come clean to him. She had to confess. Her confession was something that she knew might very well change Rick's mind about her entirely—it might very well drive him to send her away again.

It wasn't something that she could hold onto any longer, not if she was expecting him to make some kind of decision about what they were doing.

And suddenly there was something of a cold fear in her chest, because she didn't know how he might react. She would take it, though. She would accept whatever reaction he had. And, she decided in an instant, she would do her best to keep Tyreese from being involved.

If Rick kicked her out of this group, she would survive—or she wouldn't. Either way, she was planning on leaving anyway. And even though she'd started to put those thoughts out of her mind and had started, in her own little way, to replace them with the idea that there might be something there—something to look forward to—she knew well enough how to shut those thoughts down and go if she had to go. Tyreese, though? He needed this. She wasn't going to take that from him.

She sucked in another breath, already feeling her chest tightening at the thought of admitting what had happened to him, and she turned and walked back to where she'd been sitting before to sit once more. Her knees felt shaky and she was more than certain that they weren't going to hold out for this—but she wasn't going to fall to them, not in front of him, not if he was going to tell her that she had to leave.

That wasn't who she was anymore.

"Carol? What's wrong?" Rick asked.

Carol covered her mouth, taking a moment to compose herself, and shook her head at him.

"I have to tell you something," she said. "I have to tell you—what happened. Before you say anything else. Before you even—before you think anything else. I have to tell you."

He looked afraid, and rightly should he be, Carol thought to herself.

"When—after you left," Carol said, focusing her attention on the arm of the chair she was sitting in so that she didn't have to see his face while she spoke, "I went back to the prison. I tried to leave. But—I couldn't just leave and I didn't think—and I still don't—that you had the right to do what you did."

He started to interrupt her and she held up her hand. She looked at him and shook her head.

"Please, don't interrupt me," she said. "You can say whatever you want to say when I'm done. You can say—whatever it is. But—just let me finish. Because, if you interrupt me, I won't finish."

Rick simply nodded his understanding.

"I didn't think that you had the right to do what you did. I wasn't going to just—leave—when I knew that people were sick. I knew that they were coming back with medication. They would need all the hands that they could get," Carol said. "The worst you could have done was kill me and, honestly, I felt like you were determined to do that anyway. So—I was going to go back and confess to everyone. Let them all decide."

She paused a moment and looked at him, but he was staring off at the wall behind her, his eyes unfocused. He was going to give her the chance to say what she had to say, just like she'd requested. She felt sorry for him, though, because he looked bothered by just what she'd already said and he had no idea that it was absolutely nothing in comparison to what was to come.

"When I got back, the prison was already burning," Carol said. "By the time I made the decision to come back—there was nothing to come back too. I saw—Tyreese leaving. I saw he had the girls with him. So—I followed them. Finally? I caught up with them. We—travelled for a bit. We saw the signs for Terminus. We were going there. We—stopped—in a farmhouse. A little house—in a little grove. A pecan grove. And—it was really nice, actually, so—we were going to stay. Not—maybe not forever—but we were going to stay for a little while. Except…"

She paused. There was just no easy way to say it. There was no way to paint a picture of what had happened—of the absolute horror of the situation—and make it come out as anything picturesque or lovely. It was absolutely the stuff of horror movies, and there was no way to soften it. She couldn't soften it for herself, and she couldn't soften it for Rick really. It was something that would haunt her for the rest of her life, and very likely in the hereafter if such a place existed, and she didn't know how to make it sound "nicer".

She just had to say it.

"Rick, Lizzie was never—Lizzie had a lot of problems. And she never really understood the Walkers. She never knew what they were. She thought…" Carol had to stop more than she wanted as she spoke. She had to focus on swallowing back her emotions and keeping them in check. She didn't want to break down and be reduced to a blubbering person who couldn't be understood. But it still made her want to break down. "She thought that the Walkers were another stage of life. We die, we become them, we live forever as Walkers. She didn't want to kill them—but even that wasn't the problem."

Carol shook her head, feeling frustrated with herself. It just wouldn't come out the way she wanted it to come. It kept getting stuck in her throat. Finally she sucked in a breath and spit out the rest of the story as quickly as she could, very nearly feeling like she was vomiting it out at him.

"She killed Mikka," Carol said. "One day, when we went to get water, we came back and she'd killed Mikka. She wanted—she was going to kill Judith too—maybe all of us. She wanted to let her come back as a Walker. She thought she'd still be herself—she wanted me to see that she'd still be Mikka. She didn't know…"

Another pause, another breath, and Carol was sure she couldn't look at Rick.

"She might have killed all of us, but she planned to kill Judith," Carol said. "I knew that she couldn't go on like that. I knew it wasn't safe for Judith. It wasn't safe for anyone. It wasn't even safe for Lizzie. Sooner or later? She'd have killed herself to—to join everyone else."

Carol looked at him then, but she didn't really let her eyes see him. She merely directed them in his direction.

"I killed her. I…shot her. Before we left for Terminus," Carol said. "It was me. It—wasn't Tyreese. It was me."

Carol looked at Rick then, actually allowed her eyes to focus on him. He was looking back at her. He was staring at her. Now he wasn't focused on the wall behind her or a curtain or whatever it had been that he'd been looking at in the faint illumination provided by the two lanterns burning in the room.

He was looking at her.

And she felt a catch because he didn't look like she'd expected him to look after such a confession.

"Rick?" She asked. "Say something?"


	17. Chapter 17

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol stayed in her seat for the moment. She didn't trust her legs enough to try to get up. She already knew, and knew well, that in times like this her knees could betray her and deem her bodyweight to be just too much to support.

Rick was simply staring at her, almost blankly, and it took him long enough to respond that Carol was starting to grow as uncomfortable with his silence as she might have been with any possible reaction or response he might hurl in her direction.

When he finally did speak, though, his voice was low—he almost sounded defeated with the volume of it—and his words weren't any that she'd expected.

"You would do anything for this group," he said.

He lowered his face to the floor a moment and Carol didn't speak. She waited on him. She waited for him to take in all that she'd said. She waited for him to think about a response. This wasn't something that she felt anyone would know how to address immediately. She knew that she wouldn't be able to, not if she were sitting in his place.

"You would do anything for this group," he repeated, still not looking at her.

Carol didn't feel she needed to respond. She'd responded to that statement, or question, whichever it was meant to be, once before and she didn't feel the need to repeat herself. She felt that he should know the answer to that.

"You would…" He started, as though he were just going to repeat the same phrase once more and then he stopped. He looked at her. "You would do anything for Judith, too."

Carol nodded her head just enough to register that she was even still there and following along with him as he went through things himself.

"I thought I couldn't…that's not true," he said, disputing with himself suddenly. "I said that I couldn't trust you with her. But—you're the person she'd be the safest with. You're the person she is the safest with."

Carol hummed negation of that and shook her head at him.

"She's safe with you, Rick," Carol said. "She's safe with Tyreese. With Daryl. With Michonne. Carl would keep her safe."

"What happened out there," Rick said. "With—Karen and David? Carol—you're right. I had…I had no right to do that. It isn't an excuse, but I was trying to do…"

He stopped speaking again and shook his head. He laughed to himself ironically.

"I'm tired of hearing my own excuses," he commented, more to himself than to her. "I'm tired of saying…I did what I thought was best. This group…it needs a leader. These people…they need someone to follow. But I'm not that leader. I want to be. I was—as a cop—I was trained to be a leader. In case of emergency, follow the police officer. But I'm not a leader. I'm not anymore prepared for this than anyone else."

Carol sat back in her chair. She almost felt disarmed at the moment. She wasn't expecting his words to unfold into what they were becoming. She expected him to be angry with her. She expected him to respond to what she'd just told him. But, instead, he was responding something else entirely, even if they were related.

Still, Carol sat still and quiet and waited for him to have the moment that he seemed to need to have.

"I made that decision because…I was overwhelmed. I didn't know what decision to make. The virus was taking over the prison. It was threatening the lives of everyone that I was working for—everyone I needed to keep safe. And then—someone was killing people? Someone was killing people and burning bodies and—Tyreese was going to expect an explanation. Everyone was going to expect me to do something about it. They were going to expect me to handle it."

"You made the decision because you were scared," Carol offered, keeping her voice as low and even as she could. She could recognize, almost immediately, that Rick was going through—in just that very instant—a range of emotions that were coming back from just thinking about the situation.

She'd seen Ed go through his own chains of emotions, and though they weren't the same exactly, she knew that things could go in a number of directions depending on which one of Rick's emotions won out at the moment. "Rick, it's OK to be scared. We're all scared. Everyday. Every…hour. We're all scared. Even—even those who don't show it? Who can't show it? They're all scared."

He fell silent a moment before he continued.

"It was going to be run with a panel. Nobody in charge. The group made the decisions—the panel made the decisions for the group," Rick said. "And when it's all running smoothly? That works. It works fine. But in the end? Things go badly? People need someone to look to. They want someone to fix things. Even the panel. They want someone to say this is the way things are. They need someone to make the hard decisions. The decisions they don't want to make. Everyone wants equality, but in the end? They just want that one person to blame because they don't want to share that."

Carol felt a catch in her chest.

It was true. It was a universal truth. When it came down to it, human nature was that everyone wanted someone else to make the hard decisions. She certainly did.

In fact, she could remember a time when she really wasn't sure she was capable of making a decision at all. She wasn't sure she wanted to make decisions, and especially not if they were difficult ones. She didn't want to be blamed for them. She didn't want to be held accountable for them.

Of course, once upon a time, hard decisions in her life had been the equivalent of what she should and shouldn't make for dinner—and a wrong decision? Depending on Ed's mood, a wrong decision could lead to a night of hell that she had to try to hide from Sophia.

She wasn't afraid anymore to make the decisions that had to be made.

Now she realized that someone had to make them. Someone had to be the one to say this is the way things go and this is what we're going to do. In her opinion, the important thing was to try to make the best decision—for everyone involved—and to follow through with it.

"I forgive you," Carol said. "I honestly, truly, forgive you for what you did, Rick. You wanted to make the best decision. You made the best one you could. You asked me to leave."

He looked at her, furrowed his brow, and shook his head.

"No," he said. "No—I didn't make the best decision. It wasn't—that wasn't my decision to make. I wasn't asked to make that decision. If anything? It belonged to everyone. It belonged to Tyreese…it belonged to everyone who was affected by it."

"Tyreese forgives me," Carol said.

Rick nodded his head, but he didn't offer more words at the moment and he didn't offer any more explanation of where his mind was for the time being.

So Carol did the only thing she knew to do and remained where she was, sitting and waiting him out.

"You made the decision about Lizzie?" He asked.

Carol stared at him.

She didn't want to lie, but she also didn't want to throw Tyreese under the proverbial bus. She reasoned to herself that she could say that she made the decision. Even though she'd discussed it with Tyreese, and even though he was reluctantly in agreement with her, he'd been the one to ask her to make the final decision—and he hadn't stopped her when she'd taken the gun from him and told her that she would do it.

_After all, Lizzie was her daughter. She'd promised to care for her as though she were her own. She was her responsibility in this world._

_It wasn't Tyreese's burden to carry, not any more than he already was._

Carol nodded.

Yes, she'd been the one to make the decision. It had been her, ultimately, that was responsible for the act. She would carry full responsibility for it, and she'd accept fully whatever punishment might be due to her.

"Tyreese knew about it?" Rick asked.

Carol nodded again.

"He knew," she said. "But—he didn't do it, Rick. It wasn't Tyreese. I made the decision. I pulled the trigger."

"But—he didn't try to stop you?" Rick asked.

Carol swallowed and gave herself a moment that she needed, just like the ones she'd gladly given to Rick, to get herself under control. She was choking, still, on her feelings over the whole thing. Any time they were brought to the forefront of her mind, she got the same feeling of drowning.

When she'd finally choked it back, she shook her head.

"There wasn't any reason to stop me," she said confidently. "It was the only thing to do. It was—the most humane thing to do."

He stared at her and then he nodded once more, apparently physically responding to some internal dialogue that he wasn't allowing her access to at the moment.

"Like killing Karen and David?" He asked.

Carol felt the feeling of the phantom strike against her rib cage that came any time Rick spoke about them. Just their names on his lips reminded her of the moment that he'd left her out there. She forgave him, she meant that, but it didn't mean that she forgot or that it hadn't happened.

She nodded again.

"Yes," she said. "It was the only thing that I could do. It was the most humane thing that I could do."

She hesitated a moment before she spoke again.

"It's what I would want," she said. "If it were me."

He nodded at her again.

"This group—they need a leader," Rick said. "They need someone to follow. Someone who can make decisions. Hard decisions. That they don't want to make. I'm not that leader."

"You're a good leader, Rick," Carol said.

He seemed amused by the statement.

He took to his feet for the first time, standing up from the creaking bed.

"I'm not that leader," Rick said. "But you? Carol—you could be that leader. You could—you'll make those decisions."

Carol sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, contemplating those words—contemplating the stark and unexpected change to the conversation that she'd thought they would have.

"They're not looking for a leader that would kill three people," Carol said. She shook her head at him. "You said it yourself. I killed our own. Nobody wants that as a leader."

"They would want a leader that they knew…that they knew would do the best thing," Rick said. "The humane thing. Even if it wasn't the easiest thing? You killed our own because you thought it was humane."

He paused.

"You killed your own because you thought it was humane," Rick said. "You did it—because you thought it was the best thing to do for someone else. Not for you. You said Tyreese knows about it? He forgave you. He wouldn't have let you do it if…"

"I'm not a leader," Carol declared.

The atmosphere in the room had changed until Carol no longer felt nervous about Rick's demeanor. He wasn't, perhaps, entirely stable, but she didn't feel he was a threat anymore—at least not to her. And her knees, now, could be trusted. She took to her feet.

"I'm not a leader, Rick," Carol said. "You're a leader. You want to be a leader, and that's the first thing that a leader needs to be. I don't want to be a leader."

"You can make the hard decisions," Rick repeated. "You can do what needs to be done."

"I do what needs to be done," Carol said. "But that's because it needs to be done, and nobody else can or will do it. Not because I want to do it."

"That's what a leader does," Rick said. "Or, it should be. But—maybe I haven't…I know I haven't. Carol, I haven't always made decisions for the right reasons."

Carol crossed her arms across her chest. It wasn't something she could dispute. She knew that Rick didn't always make decisions for the right reasons. She was pretty sure that anyone who spent enough time around him—who really watched him and talked to him—knew that he didn't always make decisions for the best reasons.

But maybe nobody did.

"Rick—you're just human," Carol said. "And—you've been a leader when this group needed you to be. Maybe you haven't always done everything right—but you've done what was asked of you, what was expected of you. That's—it's what a leader does."

For a moment longer, it was anyone's guess what might be going on behind his eyes as he fixed them on her.

"Carol?" Rick asked. She hummed, just enough to let him know that she was listening and that he should finish speaking. "I want you to be—my…helper in this…my partner. I want you to be…beside me. With me."

Carol swallowed.

"You're not angry at all?" She asked, almost in disbelief that he wasn't going to rail against her at all for what she'd done.

He shook his head slightly, but verbally he ignored the question for the time being.

"Will you…be my…partner? My _helpmate?_" Rick asked. "In leading this group?"

Carol sighed.

It wasn't really a job that she was sure that she wanted, but it was preferable to being the leader herself. And, she could testify, more than anyone else perhaps, that Rick clearly needed someone—even if it was someone who might act as nothing more than an ear and an extra voice of reason.

She nodded.

"I'll help you," she said. "I'll help you in—doing what we have to do to get the group somewhere…safe."

He nodded and voiced, in almost a whisper, his thanks.

He shifted his weight, clearly chewing on his thoughts for a second before he finally took a few steps, coming closer to Carol and reaching out, squeezing the top of her arm in his hand. It was the first touch that he'd offered her since they'd started speaking. It was strong, but it was gentle too.

He touched her face, then, with his other hand, and moved it so that he could hold her eyes entirely with his own. It was a look that was intense enough that, for a moment, it was almost unsettling.

"And…in this…this life?" He asked. "Will you—be beside me in that, too?"


	18. Chapter 18

**AN: I don't get around to answering reviews one by one, and I'm sorry for that, but I want to tell you all that I thank you for your support with this story and I'm so glad that you're enjoying it. Your encouragement means a lot to me.**

**Here's another chapter. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol stood there, barely able to catch her breath for a moment.

_If she was hearing Rick correctly, then he'd basically offered what was the closest thing this world had to a marriage proposal. _

"You want me to—help you," Carol said, trying to repeat things back in the hope that he might clarify them for her so that she could be sure not to make a fool of herself because she'd misinterpreted something—maybe because she _wanted _to hear him say something that, in actuality, he hadn't. "To—to help you lead the group?"

Rick nodded.

"Yes," he said. "I want you to help me…lead…to help me in everything," Rick said.

His voice waivered slightly, but he continued to speak.

"We've been together since the beginning, Carol," Rick said. "You were one of the first people that I met when I got to the quarry."

He smiled and raised his eyebrows, shaking his head slightly.

"I remember the first night I met you," he said.

Carol felt her cheeks burn hot and felt her stomach churn slightly. She shook her head at him.

"With Ed," she said, hoping to leave it there. She sighed. "That was a long time ago, Rick. Well, not really, but it was a long time ago. Things were different then. We were different."

Rick shook his head.

"You weren't different," he said. "You weren't. You were—still you. You were still doing what had to be done."

He chuckled.

"Even if it was laundry and ironing my pants? You were doing what had to be done," Rick said.

"But Ed…I was different," Carol said.

Rick shook his head again.

"No," he said. "You weren't—maybe you weren't fully you? Maybe you weren't free to be you? But you were who you are today, Carol. And—Sophia?"

Carol shook her head then, harder than before.

"Don't," she said.

Rick visibly and audibly swallowed.

"I should've done more," he said. "Back then…"

Carol cut him off.

"You don't have to explain anything to me," she said. "OK? You did what you had to do. You did—what you thought was best. You did what you could do."

He shook his head.

"I didn't do what I could do," Rick said. "I did what—I didn't what I should have done. I didn't do for you—for your daughter—what you'd have done for mine. Or, I think, for anyone else's."

Carol swallowed, choking on a lump that was comprised of so many feelings at the moment.

"I love Judith like she were my own," Carol said.

"I know that too," Rick said. "I've known it—even when I've ignored it. Carol—it's been us. You were there for me, you were there—you were there for Lori, even when I wasn't. I appreciate that. I—never could say it. But I appreciate that."

"It's been you and me—and Carl, and Daryl, and Glenn," Carol said. "All of us."

"Last men standing," Rick said, some humor coming into his voice. Carol smiled softly and nodded, her heart heavy for a moment at the thought of all of those they'd left behind. Some, like Ed, she was happy to have left in the Atlanta soil—but others? They left their holes.

"It's been all of us," Carol said again.

"Carl is growing up," Rick said. "One day? I dream of a place where he can have a normal life. Where Judith can have a normal life. Maybe it's too much to ask, but I dream about them finding someone—finding love. Knowing what it means to without the fear that—that they've hardly had the chance to live without."

Carol nodded.

"It's what any parent would want," she said, giving him just enough to continue since it was clear that he wasn't done speaking.

"Glenn has Maggie," Rick said. "And—with any luck? They'll have a family someday. Daryl? Daryl left—he came back, but he left. He's…"

"A free spirit," Carol offered quickly, giving the nicest name to something she couldn't quite put a name on honestly.

Rick nodded.

"It was you and me," Rick said. "I almost…I came very close to ruining that. I need you. I need you to keep me safe from myself—I need you to work with me."

Carol shook her head at him.

"You don't need me," she said. "And—I don't want you to need me."

His face fell somewhat. At the moment he was wearing his emotions on his sleeve and on his face. It was clear that what she'd said wasn't what he wanted to hear—or at least that he'd interpreted it in a way that made it what he didn't want to hear.

"I don't want you to need me, Rick," Carol said. "And—I don't want you to be my boss. I don't want you to own me. But…"

She broke off, assuring herself of her next words before she let them leave her lips.

"But if you want to be my partner? If you want to—be beside me? If that's really what you've decided you want?" Carol said.

Carol didn't even get to finish what she was saying because Rick interrupted her this time. He kissed her, softly, and then he broke away. The affection, apparently, was just supposed to keep her from saying anything else. Maybe it was supposed to confirm that he did want what she'd suggested. Either way, that's what it said to her.

She laughed ironically to herself, amused at the next feeling that washed over her.

"What?" He asked quietly, prompting her to share it with him. She shook her head gently, dismissing it, but he tipped her face toward him and held her eyes a moment. He was asking her to tell him—he wanted to know.

"It's nothing," she said.

"Then tell me nothing," Rick responded.

She licked her lips, dampening them with her tongue. For the way her mouth felt at the moment, she was surprised to find that her tongue wasn't dry like she might have imagined it would be.

"I expected something different," she said. "I expected you to…"

She broke off and he prompted her to continue.

"What?" He asked. "What'd you expect?"

"I expected you to be angry," Carol admitted. "I expected—you to tell me…to leave."

Rick turned quickly, walked a few steps away from her, and then he turned back to face her. He shook his head at her.

"I'll never be able to undo it," he said. "But—I'll never ask you to leave again. If you'll stay with me now? I'll never ask you to leave again."

Carol took the chance, then, to make her own show of faith. She closed the distance between them and she was the one that reached up, cupping her hand behind his neck, rubbing her fingers for a second in the overgrown hair there before she pulled him toward her to bring their lips together, this time with more enthusiasm than he'd shown in the kiss that he'd used merely to silence her before.

And he responded wholeheartedly. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him, and as she deepened the kiss, he lowered his hands and grabbed her.

Anticipating what he was doing, Carol wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted herself just as he lifted her body, helping him to make the transition as much as she could.

He carried her to the creaking old farm bed—a bed she'd almost thought she was going to spend the night sleeping in with Michonne, curled up together like sisters—curled up in a way that Michonne enjoyed but wouldn't have ever wanted Carol to tell anyone she requested when they roomed together and apart from everyone else.

He eased her down on the bed so that it barely even groaned with the shifting weight. Carol broke free from him just enough to nuzzle his face and she laughed to herself, overcome with how much lighter she felt just for knowing that he knew—and that it hadn't changed anything for the negative.

"I wish you would shave this terrible beard," Carol whispered to him.

He pulled away and smiled at her. The smile cracked into a laugh.

"You hate it?" He asked.

"You don't?" Carol asked.

"I feel like Grizzly Addams," he said.

"And you look like him," Carol confirmed.

"First chance I get? The beard goes," Rick said.

"If we're—if this is going to be something that we tell everyone," Carol said.

"We're telling everyone," Rick said. "Tomorrow…"

He kissed her neck and ran his tongue along the point where her neck met her shoulders, bringing it up to her ear where he bit gently at the lobe. Carol shivered, the feeling shooting through her.

"If we're telling everyone," she said, surprised at the poor quality of her voice, "then—in a way? This is sort of like…a first for us. A first…nevermind," she added the last word quickly, embarrassing herself slightly with even thinking that way.

Rick shook his head at her.

"No neverminds," he said. "It's a first…it's our first…official…"

He broke off.

"You don't know what to call it either," Carol said softly when he paused and looked somewhat uncomfortable. He shook his head in response.

"No," he said. "I know what I'm calling it, but I don't know—if that's what you…"

"It sounds strange, doesn't it?" Carol asked, hoping they were on the same wavelength. She was wishing that they were. She had a good feeling, too, that they might be. "It sounds strange—here and now—to ask you to make love to me."

She felt her cheeks burn hot and she balled her hands up in his shirt, pulling him toward her, the action giving her something to do with the nervous energy that the words brought out in her.

"I've never really said that before," she admitted.

Rick slipped his hands under her shirts—catching all the various layers that she'd piled on at once—and slid them upward, bringing the shirts as far as they would go before the tank tops caught at her breasts. Carol moved enough to help him get them off and he tossed them to the side.

She unbuttoned his shirt for him—one that he'd had since the prison and that she'd washed herself, but it still appeared to be filthy. She ran her fingers down his chest slowly and then looped them around to his back as he slipped it off and let it join her shirts.

Pants and boots, for the sake of being practical, was a job that each took to their own for the moment. Carol didn't need the theatrics and neither of them needed the frustration of trying to get the other out of the costumes they donned for every day wear.

When they were out of their clothes, Rick joined Carol on the bed. For a few moments, they spent the time together like they'd never touched before. They let fingers do their gentle exploration of plains and bumps and curves and scars. Then, Rick broke the contemplation of their fingertips by bringing his lips to his and setting off on a journey to her jaw and down her neck before slowly letting his lips retrace the journey his hands had taken.

Carol joined him. She pulled him back up to her, stealing a kiss from him before they fell into a type of dance—something that began to look like "a kiss for you and one for me" in lover's form.

She might have been satisfied, honestly, to spend the whole night doing just what they were doing—a gentle, quiet contemplation of one another, but she enjoyed too when Rick moved to tease her and to take them both in another direction.

She pulled him up, interrupting his good intentions and moved so that she could see his face.

"No," she said. "I—want to see you now."

It didn't take more than that for him to move from his position and bring his body over hers. He kissed her again and she moved, helping him to bring them together even without breaking their kiss.

She moaned into his mouth with the feeling of it and for a moment he didn't move beyond working his arms under her back and pulling her to him in an embrace.

When, finally, they started to move together, Carol did her best to do what she'd asked him to let her do in the first place. She looked at him, focused on his face, and watched it. She watched him go from calm and serene—the Rick that she knew he could be but wasn't always—to someone who was wrapped up in the moment to a point that he couldn't look back at her. And then he came back, opening his eyes to her, watching her in a way that was almost uncomfortable because, she realized, no one had ever watched her face that intently while making love to her—if anyone had ever really made love to her before.

And whether or not that was truly what they were doing? She believed it was—and she thought that he did too—and that was good enough for her.

Because, whatever it was, it felt different than anything she'd ever felt before. It felt like something she wanted to hold onto—even if only as a memory.

When her self-consciousness got the best of her, and she found that she couldn't let go for fear of what he might think of her in the moment, Rick must have sensed it. He moved to put his mouth next to her ear, and with a warm, damp blow of his breath that almost pushed her over the edge itself, he simply told her to do just that.

"Let go," he said. "I want to see you now."

And Carol did let go. She let him see her come undone with him being the one to bring her there. And he followed after. She watched him, too, as he let go of everything for the moment.

And she appreciated, when they'd both had a moment to collect themselves, that he moved to blow out the lamps and came back to turn back the covers on the bed—sealing the fact that he wasn't going anywhere, he was staying for the night—and that he wrapped her in his arms as soon as they were situated under the covers, kissing her face one last time as he breathed a goodnight to her in the darkness.


	19. Chapter 19

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here.**

**Sorry that it's taken me so long to update. I'll try not to be so tardy next time.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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It was still dark when Rick woke because no light trailed in through the farmhouse windows. He lie there listening to the sound of Carol breathing next to him in the otherwise silent room.

She was sleeping beside him. She was entirely lost in her dreams. Her guard was never more down than it was at this moment. If he shifted his body, even a fraction of an inch, he could feel the warmth of hers. He could feel the slight pressure of her head, barely resting on his arm.

_She trusted him._

If there was anything he probably didn't deserve in this world—anything that he really didn't deserve—it was that.

He didn't deserve her trust.

Yet, here she was, sleeping beside him—trusting him entirely. Even after he'd done what he'd done and proved to her that he wasn't very trustworthy at all. He'd shown her, first hand, that he could and would hurt her. He'd shown her that he was quick to judge and quick to act and slow to think.

He'd proven to her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was volatile and dangerous to her well-being. He could shut himself down enough to let her drive off after he'd threatened to leave her standing on the sidewalk alone.

_And still, she trusted him._

The thought of it slammed into his chest like a brick wall collapsing down on him.

Because she'd trusted others before that had hurt her. And he knew that she'd trusted Ed—even though he'd hurt her time and time again.

Rick couldn't take back what he'd done, but he could at least resolve not to make her ever regret giving him that trust again.

When the sun started to come up the room began to lighten with its rays. They seeped in through the window panes. They crawled slowly across the floor and must have crawled up the side of the bed because they slowly crawled toward Rick—across the blankets.

The room was a nice room. It was the kind of room in the kind of farm house where he could imagine people—in a different world and in a different time—growing old together.

Maybe it was the perfect room for new beginnings too.

Carol started to stir slowly. He watched her as her mind fought the last war between waking and sleeping. There was an internal struggle—even though he wasn't entirely sure if it was or wasn't related to something she was dreaming—and it came through on the features of her face. Before they were relaxed and calm. She looked peaceful—so much younger than he knew her to be.

As she neared waking? They drew up a little more in concern or light distress and her eyelids fluttered.

Rick considered letting her finish out the battle, realizing that he wasn't accustomed to watching her when she woke in the morning, but finally he decided that he didn't want to see her suffer—even if it was just fighting with herself over five more minutes of peaceful sleep.

He moved the arm that she was barely resting her head on, most of it having slid off to the mattress, and slid it so that he somewhat collected her up and pulled her to him. She woke with the movement, jumping at first.

"Shhh..." he hissed at her.

She opened her eyes to him. She looked confused for a second and then slowly came into her reality before she smiled at him...a soft smile. He wasn't used to seeing that smile, on that face, in the first rays of the morning light—but he was certain it was something he could easily _become _used to.

He smiled back at her.

"You were having a bad dream?" He asked.

She furrowed her brow.

"Was I?" She asked.

"It looked like you were," he said. "I woke you up. I didn't think—there wasn't any reason for you to have one."

"Some days? This whole world feels like a bad dream," Carol replied. "Sometimes it's the nightmares that are the nicest places to be."

Rick felt his stomach knot up.

More than likely, he'd been the cause of at least one of those nights when nightmares were preferable to reality. He moved the arm that was partially wrapped around her to pull her toward him and she put the effort into moving the rest of the way.

She was coming to kiss him—he knew it. He could feel it, but she stopped short. She hummed in her throat.

"Morning breath," she said as a word of warning and an explanation for her halting.

He chuckled at her and closed the distance himself, lifting himself up to meet her. He didn't notice the morning breath that he was supposed to find so offensive. All he noticed was the feeling of her lips against his and the satisfaction that came when she opened her lips to his tongue's request.

He followed after her when she moved to break the kiss until he couldn't physically move any farther without breaking it to change his position.

The smile was back, broader than before, and there was something else in her expression. Even if Rick didn't know precisely what it was, he was happy to have had something to do with putting it there.

"We have to get up," she said. "People are going to want breakfast and—if I'm around? Nobody seems able to even light a fire."

She laughed to herself.

"If I stayed in bed all day? Tonight we'd go out and find them all sitting around a box of supplies, staring at it, starving slowly to death," Carol teased.

Rick laughed.

"You deserve the time off," he said. "I think they're all grown. They've done OK when they had to."

"Judith will be up soon," Carol said.

"Michonne is so good with her," Rick teased, reaching his hand cupping the back of her neck. He squeezed gently, massaging the muscles there. It must have felt good to her because her eyes did an unexpected type of flutter at the sensation that it caused.

"We have to get up," she said. "And—if we're really doing this? You've got to talk to Carl."

As almost an announcement that the inconsiderate sun—rising and interrupting everyone's peace from the night before—had woken others up, there was the clopping down the hall of someone's heavy footfalls just outside the door.

Rick hummed.

"Everybody's up," he said. "And we have to get out of this room. So—I think we're really doing this."

Carol smirked.

"I could go out the window," she offered.

He sat up, leaned toward her, and kissed her on the forehead this time. She laughed quietly.

"Let's go," he said. "I'm going to find Carl first—not that it's a secret. But—I'm going to find him first."

"I'll go make breakfast," Carol said. She laughed to herself again. "If anyone says anything? I'll just threaten to stop cooking if they don't stop talking."

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Rick sat on the edge of the bed that Carl had occupied and held Judith. She was calm and sweet and content with the bottle that they had to offer her for breakfast—nothing fancy since the water for the formula had been room temperature, but it was gourmet for Judith.

A few feet from him, Carl went about the full gamut of grooming that their lives now allowed them.

"Can I talk to you? For just a minute?" Rick asked for at least the second time.

"I've been listening, Dad," Carl said. "But you're not talking."

"Can you sit down for a minute? Let's really talk?" Rick asked.

Carl looked annoyed—even at the end of the world, teenagers could apparently still look at their parents as though they were the dumbest people alive.

"I promise to make it quick," Rick said, biting back a laugh. "It won't—interrupt too much of your busy day."

"We need to move on, Dad," Carl said. "Soon. We can't stay here too long. We'll attract Walkers. The fences here?"

Rick held up his hand to stop Carl's "lecture" on their travels.

"We're leaving," Rick said. "Today. Tomorrow at the latest. It's safer here than it has been in other places we've stayed. We'd be fine for the night. Sit? Please?"

Carl sighed and came to sit on the bed with all the aggravation that his frame could handle. He disturbed the bed enough when he dropped his weight that Rick shook and Judith lost interest in her bottle for a moment.

"What?" Carl asked.

Rick considered lecturing him on how he addressed everyone, but he decided to fight his battles.

"You know that I loved your Mom," Rick said.

Carl looked at the floor between his shoes.

Rick didn't read into that. Maybe Carl didn't think that he had love Lori. But then—admittedly even Rick wasn't sure that he had loved her like he should have.

Or maybe Carl was just tired of hearing it and having to, in some way or another, confirm it for Rick. Rick knew he'd said it a number of times—and he wasn't positive, either, if that was for Carl's reassurance or for his own.

"I loved your Mom," Rick said. "But—Carl—she's not coming back."

"She's dead, Dad," Carl said. "I know—I shot her, remember?"

Rick swallowed and hummed.

"I know," he said. "And you shouldn't have had to do that. I wish—I wish you would have never had to do that."

"But I did," Carl said. "We do—we do what we have to do. I wasn't going to let her turn."

"You did the right thing," Rick said. "I wish that you didn't have to, but you did the right thing. I hate—that you and Judith don't have her..."

"Dad!" Carl said sharply.

Rick looked at him.

"Mom's gone," Carl said. "She's gone and—I miss her. But she's gone. Judith—she'll never know her, but Mom? She's gone."

Rick laughed ironically to himself.

"You've got to stop doing that," Rick said. Carl looked at him with question on his face. "Parenting me," Rick said. "You've got to—you're not the parent."

Carl's expression changed slightly and Rick had his attention drawn away for a moment because Judith finished her bottle and fussed to have her position changed. He shifted her around, patting her back, to prompt her to burp.

"What do you want to talk to me about?" Carl asked.

Rick realized he'd almost forgotten, for the moment, why it was that he'd even come in here and almost forced his somewhat reluctant teenager to sit and speak for a moment.

"Carl...I..." he stopped.

He shook his head.

"I don't know..." Rick continued, realizing that the words weren't coming like he wanted them to.

How was he supposed to do this? How was he supposed to tell Carl that he was involved with Carol? He'd never imagined this moment because, before all this had happened, he'd never imagined a time when he wouldn't be with Lori. And since this had happened?

He'd never imagined that he'd fall in love. And he knew that's what it was. But he'd never prepared for it to happen.

"Just say it," Carl said.

Rick looked at him.

"I already know what it is," Carl pushed. "I do."

It was Carl's turn to look amused.

"Dad, don't look so surprised," Carl said. "I know. I think—everybody does. You're not as good at sneaking around as you think you are."

"I'm not sneaking around," Rick responded.

Carl laughed.

"So you admit it?" Carl said.

Rick couldn't help but be amused then.

"This wasn't how this was supposed to go," Rick said.

"You didn't seem to know how it was supposed to go," Carl said. "So—now that I know? You want to tell me?"

Rick nodded his head. It still took him a moment, though, to actually get the words out.

"Carol and I—are together," Rick said. "We decided, last night, that we're—Carl, we're serious. We're—we're really going to do this."

Carl looked back at the floor for a moment, at the spot between his feet, and then he looked back at Rick.

A hint of a smile on his lips.

"Do you love her?" Carl asked.

Rick swallowed.

"I do," he said. "I—don't think I've told her...not like I want to. But—I do."

"I won't tell," Carl teased.

Rick nodded his appreciation.

"Do you love her more than you loved Mom?" Carl asked.

"I loved your mom," Rick said. "And—I love Carol. But—I love them both differently. I don't love them the same. I'm not sure if you can love two people exactly the same."

"But you love her the same way?" Carl asked.

Rick thought about it a moment and finally answered it simply by nodding. Carl mirrored the nod.

"I don't expect her to replace your mom for you, Carl," Rick said. "And—for Judith? I don't want you to think that we're not going to tell her about your mom, about her mom."

"Dad," Carl said, interrupting Rick. "I don't think—you're not trying to replace Mom. We loved her. We still love her. But she's gone."

Rick nodded again.

"Yeah," he said quietly.

"And..." Carl offered, "We love Carol too. She's—she's the closest thing that Judith has to a mom. And—she's good to me too."

"She loves you," Rick said.

"And she loves you?" Carl asked.

"I hope so," Rick said. "I think so."

Carl nodded and got up from his spot on the bed.

"Breakfast?" He asked, apparently ending the conversation.

"We've got to get ready to leave, right?" Rick asked.

Carl nodded his head without any real commitment.

"Tomorrow?" Carl said, reaching and taking Judith who went to him happily enough. "I think—the fences will hold for the night."

"You're the boss," Rick said.


	20. Chapter 20

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Carol had been barking out commands that didn't even need to be given in the effort to keep people from asking her questions or suggesting anything about a relationship with Rick.

She was giving him the chance to tell Carl first. Even though he was currently back there—in the room where Carl was sleeping—supposedly sharing this information with his son, she wasn't risking saying anything to anyone else.

Rick wasn't exactly known for always sticking to what he said. He wasn't exactly known for always following through. He was, however, very well known for changing his mind.

Carol didn't want to assume that promises made in some sort of afterglow moment wouldn't be quickly backed out of when Rick faced his teenage son—a boy who had so many things to be angry about but still seemed to invent a few more every now and again. If he backed out of telling Carl? She didn't want Carl to step into the main part of the house only to find out from someone there what his father hadn't been able to bring himself to say.

So whenever anyone had a approached her, while she'd worked to get a pit for the fire dug in the yard of the farmhouse so that the flames might be hidden from the sight of any Walkers—and anyone else who might have an interest in them—so that they could have hot food for breakfast, she'd simply barked out another order of something that needed to be done without waiting to hear the reason of their approach.

The only two that watched her, really, with knowing eyes were Daryl and Michonne. There was something else there—in Daryl's expression—when he watched her out of the side of his eyes, but Michonne simply smirked every now again, her lips quivering with her effort not to make any expression at all and failing at it to some lesser degree.

When Carl and Rick came out of the farmhouse, though, as though they were coming to check the progress of the breakfast that was being prepared, Carol felt a tapping at her shoulder. She turned, expecting it to be Rick and expecting him to offer her nothing more than a shake of his head, to find that Carl was standing directly behind her. His expression wasn't a smile, but it was soft.

Carol got up from the crouching position she'd taken, tending the baby flames she was nurturing into something more, and wiped her hands on her pants to wait for some reaction from him.

Maybe she hadn't expected it, but when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a strong—although quick—hug, she returned it and understood the gesture for what it was. She didn't press him for the words that he didn't seem quite ready to offer—and that he might never really be ready to give.

Rick smiled at the sight from where he was standing, a few feet off with Judith in his arms, and then he stepped forward to take Carl's place when Carl moved quickly away and "busied" himself with the first task that he could find to keep his hands busy.

Rick slipped an arm around Carol's shoulder and then got the attention of everyone there. Carol pretended, for her part, that she didn't hear the nerves shaking his voice ever so slightly when he requested something of an audience with everyone.

Michonne smiled then, giving away that she'd been waiting for it, and Carol thought—though she might've imagined—that a number of other people had somewhat knowing expressions on their faces.

"Maybe there is a need for formal announcements," Rick said, "and maybe there isn't. Either way—I'm making one. Carol and I are..."

He stopped, suddenly, like the words got caught in his throat and Carol waited as patiently as she could—just like everyone else—for him to finish.

He cleared his throat, moving the hung words out of the way, and then he continued.

"We don't know what to call it," Rick said, his tone of voice different. "I don't know—if any of the old rules apply and it was a long time—a very long time—since I've done anything like this. So—I don't know what I would've said even back then. We're trying this. We're trying _us_. And we're—not trying to hide it anymore from any of you."

Everyone looked at them, most of them almost frozen and blinking, until it seemed that no one had the ability to move or to speak at all.

Really, just as she and Rick didn't know what to call it—or how to tell others about it—it seemed that no one else really knew how to respond to it. It was as if they were waiting, now that the "news" had been announced, to be dismissed.

Of course, Carol hadn't really expected any kind of fanfare about the whole thing.

"Well," she said, "if we're going to have breakfast—and get on the road? Someone needs to bring me a box of supplies."

Tyreese, immediately, moved to do just that. Her words and his movement served to break whatever trance had fallen over everyone else and they began to go back to what they'd been doing before.

"We're not leaving tonight," Rick said quickly. "We're staying another day at least. The fences here will hold, and we could all use the break."

"You mean you could use the honeymoon," Glenn called out, his words stirring everyone to laugh. Carol, too, found them amusing.

Rick chuckled quietly.

"All right," he said. "You earned that."

"Everyone's known forever," Michonne muttered. "It's about time we could start talking about it in more than a whisper."

Carol went back to her cooking, immediately, and thanked Tyreese when he came with the box that she'd asked for, putting it near her on the ground.

"OK," Rick commented, walking around with Judith in tow, "we've had our fun. I was thinking, though, that we could go out today—check houses that are close by. Gather up food, water—necessities we always need? If we're staying the night, we might as well make good use of the day."

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Carol didn't think that Glenn was too far off with what he'd said. It did _feel_ like something of a honeymoon.

They'd left dinner together, said goodnight, and gone to their room together—all in open view of everyone else. There was no secret sneaking about at night. There was no "night guest" showing up outside the room.

They went to _their _room together. They went to bed together.

It was hardly a honeymoon, but in some ways it felt like one. And in those same ways? It also made Carol just a little uncomfortable. It made her feel like there was something new and _strange _about the night, even if her brain understood that the unusual feeling of unease in her stomach was entirely irrational.

Rick must have noticed it, though, because when he entered into the room—the very one they'd shared the night before under the cloak of secrecy—he immediately started to strip out of his clothes in front of the table that held the two pots of clean water they'd brought in for bathing, but he stopped before he'd fully gotten out of his pants and looked at her with a puzzled expression.

"Something—something wrong?" He asked.

Maybe her uneasy stomach was putting expressions on her face that she didn't mean to make.

Carol shook her head and laughed to herself now that he'd brought attention to it. She swallowed.

"What Glenn said this morning," Carol said. "About it being a honeymoon for us? It's silly, but—it kind of feels like one, doesn't it?"

Rick seemed to consider it a moment. He smiled, a soft laugh barely escaping his lips.

"I guess it does," he said. "Though—I have to admit that I felt more out of place talking about it today than I feel now. This? It just feels—_right_—to me."

He finished coming out of his pants so that they were no longer a hobble about his ankles and then he walked over to her, running his finger just in the elastic band of his underwear like he was stretching them for the relief of having come out of the slightly more restrictive jeans.

"You alright?" He asked. "You're not uncomfortable?"

Carol laughed to herself again, this time at her own ridiculousness.

"I'm fine," she said. "Just—as strange as it sounds? Just a little nervous."

Rick smiled and reached a hand up, touching the side of her face. He cupped her jaw in his hand and leaned forward, kissing her softly. The kiss was enough to help with erasing much of the nerves that she'd been feeling.

Overthinking things, maybe, made her feel uncomfortable. But he was right, at least when it came to the kiss. Something just felt _right_. And now? It was right and out in the open.

She smiled at him when he broke the kiss and he almost looked shy about it, ducking his head a second before he turned back and returned to his spot in front of the pots. He dipped a finger in each of them and then waved her over.

"Come on," he said. "This is the warmest. You take it—but it won't wait for long."

Carol accepted the gesture and came over, stripping out of her own clothes now with the same comfortable nature that he'd shown.

She dipped her washcloth into the water, thanked Rick for the cake of soap that he offered her, and started to scrub off the grime of the day. It always seemed that, as she washed away the dirt, dust, and whatever else had coated her skin during the day, she also washed into herself the fatigue that she should feel at night. It didn't always mean that she would sleep—sometimes her mind wouldn't allow it and she couldn't wash it clean—but it meant that she would almost always feel like she _should _sleep.

And, at the moment? Her mind wasn't plaguing her like it normally did. At the moment? The voices that reminded her of everything that kept her awake at night were still and quiet.

There was nothing, just for a moment, except what was right in front of her.

She watched as Rick washed himself—she wondered if he felt the same way. She wondered if the voices plagued him too. And, for once, she really wondered what they said to him—if all the voices were the same or not.

She laughed quietly to herself at the thought.

"What?" Rick asked, a quick smile flitting across his lips because of her amusement.

"It's stupid," she said. "Just—a stupid thought."

Rick hummed.

"It just so happens," he said, "that I don't mind stupid thoughts too much. What is it?"

Carol swallowed.

"Do you have—voices in your head?" Carol asked.

He furrowed his brow at her and she realized how the question sounded. She shook her head quickly.

"I don't mean like—I hear voices, voices," Carol corrected. "Just—when you're trying to sleep? Do you hear this—this voice? That just—it just reminds you of everything that you don't want to think about?"

Rick stared at her. She worried, then, that he was going to think she was absolutely insane. Maybe he was going to think that he'd done right by leaving her on the side of the road to save them all from witnessing the moment she began to fashion hats for herself out of aluminum foil. His features softened, though, and he nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah—I think—I think everybody does."

Carol smiled with the relief that he hadn't thought her absolutely mad.

"I was just thinking that—right now? I'm really tired. And that's usually when they start—when I'm tired and want to sleep the most. But tonight? Right now? They aren't there. They're just—quiet," Carol said.

Rick hummed.

"Funny," he said.

Carol hummed in her throat to push him on into explaining his comment.

He smirked at her.

"Mine won't shut up," he said. "Right now? They just keep..."

He broke off, laughed to himself, and then continued again. Carol thought she might have seen him blush ever so slightly.

"They just keep telling me that—a beautiful woman is standing in front of me, naked and ready to go to bed—and I'm just wasting my time, standing here and listening to them," Rick said.

Carol gave him her best suggestive look, raising her eyebrows at him, even though she wasn't sure how suggestive it really was. She'd never really had practice with that sort of thing—she'd seldom issued any invitation to Ed and there really hadn't been any other opportunity for her to practice such a thing beyond a few failed attempts with Daryl.

"I guess you need to make them be quiet, then," Carol said. "What—what do you think might—quieten them down?"

Rick smiled. Either her powers of suggestion were functioning well—or he was simply accepting them for what they were.

He moved, pressing his body against hers even as he pulled her into him—the cool dampness of their skin contrasted by the heat of their naked bodies touching—and he dipped his head to kiss her neck, trailing his tongue there enough to send a shiver through her that was far more violent than even those brought about by the cold water and cool air.

"I've got some ideas," Rick said, whispering in her ear and sealing the statement with a nip of her earlobe that made the shiver repeat itself. "But—if you're too tired?"

Carol swallowed and was hyper aware of the sound of it in her ears, next to her fast and pounding pulse, until she was sure that he could hear both.

"Suddenly—I'm not as tired anymore," she said. "Strange how that happens."

Rick chuckled.

"Strange," he repeated. "But—tomorrow's an early morning. On the road just at sunrise."

"I think," Carol said, "that we've got a little time. After all—it wouldn't be fair for me to leave you awake with your voices while mine are sleeping."


	21. Chapter 21

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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To Carol, there was even a different feeling to the steady paced march that drew them closer and closer to whatever promised land they were searching for. It didn't make sense, of course, that there should be a different feeling in the air. After all, just because everyone knew they were together—or that they were trying to figure out what that even meant anymore—didn't make it any different than it had been. But still, it did make it different.

Carol caught herself, as they walked, looking back at Rick. For the moment he was three or four steps behind her, just off to her right, and a quick look cast over her shoulder could find him. It wasn't anything unusual. She'd looked at him a thousand times, maybe even more, while they'd walked. But still it was different. Because now? She didn't feel like she had to hide the look. She didn't feel like she had to do it quickly or like the glances were stolen.

She could catch him looking back at her, something that she was now aware that he did often, and she could smile at him. She could flick her eyes back to the road and then back at him and find him still looking at her, a smile playing on his lips too, and there was no concern about what others might think. There was no worry about what they might say.

Nobody was saying anything. Nobody had really said a single thing other than to offer their form of congratulations if they felt so inclined.

The only two people, maybe, that had even been the slightest bit odd about it—and perhaps that was even being a touch too dramatic—were Tyreese and Daryl. And it seemed, even if she might be imagining it, that the farther they went along and the closer they got to their destination—whatever that might truly end up being—the more the tension, even if it was barely perceptible, seemed to grow.

It had been, now, more than two weeks since Carol and Rick had made their announcement to the group. They'd kept up a steady travelling pace, at least as steady as travel could be when Walkers interrupted them throughout the day and they had to detour frequently in search of food, water, and shelter. They felt like they were getting closer to Virginia. They felt like they were getting closer to something. The demeanor of everyone changed slightly when they spoke about the place. But really? In the past two weeks? There hadn't been too much time for talk or for anything, really, that didn't involve moving forward.

Carol knew that many of them were clinging to the idea that, somehow, they'd cross the line into Virginia and the whole state would unfold in front of them like some magical fairy land where Walkers didn't exist and everything that was happening to them now was a thing of the past. Maybe, stepping just over the imaginary state line, they'd be met by something as ridiculous as someone selling ice cream and asking them if they'd like a tour of the place while they picked out their new homes. In some ways, Carol was clinging to the fantasy too. Because, after all, that was the key. It was a fantasy. And deep, deep down? They all knew that it was. But the moment they stopped hoping, they started dying.

Carol never pointed out to anyone that she feared there'd be nothing more for them in the whole state of Virginia than they'd had in the whole state of Georgia. She didn't point out to a single person that it might even be worse. The population, after all, might even have been greater and would translate to more Walkers and less peace. She didn't let anyone know about the negativity that was trying its best to take over her mind.

Instead, she focused on the happy little flicker of something that was burning inside her. She focused on the strange sensation that pulsed inside her every now again. It was a burning in her stomach sometimes. Others, it was a pleasant ache in her chest. Sometimes it travelled lower—others it bubbled up in her throat. Wherever it went inside of her, though, she held onto it with both hands. She held onto it because it had been so long since she'd felt it and she was afraid of being entirely without it again.

And it had been Rick that had given it to her. And it was Rick that, every time she caught him glancing at her out of the corner of her eye, gave her a little comfort that she hadn't lost it. Not yet. And that, maybe, if she was as lucky as they all wanted to believe they'd be, she never would have to lose it.

It was dangerous to hope that much, and Carol knew it, but it was the only feeling that let her know she wasn't numb. It was the only feeling that made the days, somehow, seem worth it.

When they finally reached the Virginia line, their whole party had stopped on the road and had something of a quick celebration. There were smiles from people whose faces had been, only hours before, drawn up in fatigue. There was something akin to dancing that broke out in the excited steps of a few, their energy renewed by their new location. Carol, herself, had gladly accepted Rick's embrace and she'd pulled him in a circle with her as they celebrated a chance. Because that's really what it was—they were celebrating a chance.

Immediately they'd decided to make camp. There was no need pushing their minds, their bodies, or their luck any more that day. They'd accomplished so much. They'd made the first step toward the life they were dreaming about.

They'd found a house, quickly enough, that was barely big enough for all of them to squeeze into but which had a well for what had once been a small farm and still had gas that they could use. One by one, they took pots of hot water to wash. Daryl found them meat for a meal. And then, like children dreaming about Christmas, most of them had gone to bed.

Carol, feeling a little overwhelmed for something like sleep, had settled in to take the first night watch. She sat on the porch, sipping weak tea that was little more than hot water—but was still delicious to her at this point—and looked out over the property. It was surrounded by a fence made of mostly rotting boards, but in the few hours that she'd been out there, she'd only taken care of four Walkers and had greeted one curious raccoon and an opossum that became disgruntled at being discovered and had waddled off to find himself a less crowded place to pass his evening.

She recognized Tyreese's heavy and slightly uneven step even before she turned around to see that he'd joined her on the porch. He stood, towering over her in this position, for a moment before he gestured toward the step with his hand. Carol patted the boards with the same silence he'd been guarding to invite him to join her. He did, scooting close enough that she shivered with the contrast between his warm body and cool night air.

"You want to talk," Carol said.

"What do I want to talk about?" Tyreese asked.

Carol hummed.

"You have to tell me," Carol said. "But—I can tell you want to talk."

Tyreese didn't say anything for a moment.

"Is it Rick?" Carol asked.

Another silence, but eventually Tyreese broke it.

"He's a man who likes his power," Tyreese said.

"He doesn't like the pressure that goes with it," Carol said.

"Nobody who wants power does," Tyreese said. "They just want the power. Not the responsibility."

"He's gotten us this far," Carol said, a knee-jerk response and she knew it. Even if she loved Rick, she wasn't blind to his faults. Ed had taught her what becoming blind, all in the name of love, to someone's faults would do for her.

"We've gotten us this far," Tyreese said. "Rick wouldn't be anywhere if it hadn't been for you. If it hadn't been for—for what you had to do at Terminus."

"He's a good leader," Carol said. "When he keeps his head about him, he's a good leader."

"And when he loses it?" Tyreese pressed.

"Then he's just a man," Carol said.

Tyreese made a sound like a snorting laugh in the night and Carol turned and looked at him. In the dim and flickering light that came from the small lantern she let keep her company, she could see that he was smiling. He was smiling, and he was watching her.

"If we get to D.C., even if it isn't what Eugene wishes it was, there could be something there," Tyreese said.

"Isn't that what we're hoping for?" Carol asked. "Something? Somewhere?"

Tyreese sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

"Yeah," he said, almost grunting out the word. "But—if what's there is established? What's going to happen when Rick doesn't have the power anymore?"

"He'll be happy to hand it over," Carol said. As she tasted the words on her own tongue, she was certain that she didn't believe them. She'd said a lot of things in her life, though, that she hadn't believed to be true. This was just another in a long chain of things.

Tyreese didn't believe them either. He let it be known with a light laugh.

"He's better with you," Tyreese said. "But—if something happens? If he loses it again?"

"Say it, Tyreese," Carol said. "The night doesn't last but so long."

"Longer sometimes," Tyreese commented.

Carol hummed. She knew he was stalling. He was buying time to think about what he wanted to say—or to think about if he really wanted to say it. What he didn't think about was the fact that anything he might say, she'd probably turned it over and over in her mind a few times already.

"He threw you out," Tyreese said. "He threw me under the bus. Said I'd kill you without—without even hearing you out. Like I don't have more self-control than an animal and you were nothing more than...cold blooded."

Even with the love that had taken root in her chest, growing slowly every time that she and Rick had even a moment to water it and tend to it, the words still pained Carol. They still brought back the ache that she'd felt when he'd turned her away.

"He's sorry for that," Carol said.

"Sorry enough not to do it again?" Tyreese asked. "Some other way? We don't know what's going to happen."

"That's just it," Carol responded. "We don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. Good or bad. But..."

"But?" Tyreese prompted when Carol's words fell off and she didn't make any move to start speaking again.

"But I love him," Carol said. "And if I'm going to love him? I have to trust him." She sucked in a breath, almost groaning at her own thoughts. "And if you love me? You have to trust him too."

"I have to trust you to make your own decisions," Tyreese said. "And I have to trust that—that Rick knows that if I have to? He wasn't entirely wrong. If I have to? I can...I can kill. I don't want to—I don't even want to be party to it. But I can—if I have to. I want you to be happy. You deserve that. There's so little of it left these days. I want you to have it, if it's there to be had."

"But you don't believe I will be?" Carol asked.

"I'm just worried," Tyreese said. "About what might happen. About what we might find. I'm just worried about—what we've seen happen whenever Rick starts to feel like he's losing control."

Carol swallowed and hummed.

"I can't tell you everything's all going to be alright," Carol said.

"Didn't ask you to," Tyreese said. "And I won't ever ask you to."

"But," Carol said, almost interrupting his words, "I can tell you that—I think things might be different for him. If he knows he's not alone? If he knows it's not all on him and he knows that—he's not to blame for everything? I think things might be different. This time, whatever happens? Wherever we end up...I just feel like they'll be different."

"Wishful thinking or you've got a reason to feel this way?" Tyreese asked.

"Rick's never had me beside him," Carol said. "Not before. Not like this. And me? I've got so much support. After all—I know you're on my side."

Tyreese was quiet for a moment. His only response was to rub her back in circles, roughly but affectionately, with an open palm and then to drape that arm over her shoulder in something of a sideways hug.

"But if he doesn't treat you right..." Tyreese said, not finishing.

Carol hummed, acknowledging the comment.

"I'm not thinking about that," Carol said. "I'm thinking about—oh, but what if he does?"


	22. Chapter 22

**AN: Hi everyone (or everyone who is still here). As you may have noticed, I went MIA on this story for a while. I just lost the thread somewhere, I guess. At any rate, I'm back. I'm working on planning out the rest of the story now and I'm going to keep updating here until this story is done. **

**That being said, I have to admit that it may take me a bit to get back in the groove here. I have to ask your forgiveness for that. Hopefully the chapters aren't too bad until I get into the swing of things. **

**Anyway, I'm back and we're going to see this through to the end.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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When the sign welcomed them to Virginia, they found that Virginia must have been scorched by fire since the outbreak—or at least the part of it closest to the North Carolina border had been—because the sign was nearly blackened to the point it was only partially legible and the ground around it that stretched out for a while wasn't showing signs of too much regrowth yet. Carol thought, to herself, that they might have taken the ashes as some kind of omen of what was to come, but she kept her thoughts to herself and tried to push them out of her mind as much as possible.

Crossing the scorched border into Virginia, instead of appearing to be like a portent of bad things to come, seemed to breathe new life into the group. As soon as they stepped over the imaginary line, steps got a little lighter and sped up naturally and organically. A few smiles appeared on weary faces where there was no explanation for them beyond the simple fact that they'd reached a milestone that was clearly visible to them.

It was an obvious and tangible indication that they were making progress, and it was a step further toward their goal.

The optimism was contagious. Even though Carol had thought that she wouldn't be excited to see Virginia – after all, she'd never intended to stay with the group once they reached their destination—she had to admit that even _her_ heart felt lighter at the thought that they'd made it this far. They'd come from Georgia and they'd made it to Virginia—and no lives had been lost.

Their whole group had barely made it over the state line before Rick called out to them that they might want to start looking for somewhere to stop. The lingering proof of a long burned out forest fire—manmade or otherwise—gave a pretty good indication that they were now beggars and couldn't be too picky about where they landed for the night. There was a good chance that they had a while to travel, still, before they found anything that was even inhabitable, but they were going to take the first thing that was available to them.

The first thing available to them was a low budget motel of the kind that stretched out long and thin over the landscape like a brick snake and offered just twenty rooms to rent—most of which had probably never been filled at once. In the way of protection it offered next to nothing, and it offered very little in the way of comfort, but night was coming upon them and they needed somewhere to sleep. The whole group crowded in the lobby of the motel—a tight fit by any stretch of the imagination—to receive whatever orders Rick might have to give them.

His orders, for this night, were simple.

"This place is wide open," Rick said. "To people or to Walkers. Once we're in those rooms, we're practically on our own except for communicating through the walls. Keep any lamps low. We won't be cooking tonight. Ration your water. Tomorrow we'll try to find somewhere to restock, but it's too late tonight. If you get into trouble? The walls will probably be thin enough to get through if we have to, but we'll hope it doesn't come to that."

"And in the morning?" Tyreese asked.

"We move on," Abraham said, not waiting for Rick to respond. "We're closer now than we have been before. If we keep moving like we're moving, we'll make Richmond in a week or two."

"We keep moving like we're moving," Michonne offered, "and we'll all be dead from exhaustion and exertion."

"She's right," Daryl offered. "We gotta stop somewhere. We need time to sleep. Everyone needs to sleep. We gotta eat. Been low on water for days."

"Tonight everyone_ does_ sleep," Rick said. "There's no use in anyone keeping watch when there isn't a safe and central location available for anyone to do that. Tomorrow? We move on, but we look for somewhere we can stay for a couple of days at least. Somewhere we can catch our breaths. Scavenge for food and water."

"We've got about eighty miles to make it to Richmond," Glenn said. "We're covering around twenty miles a day on a strong day. Ten on average. Even if we slowed down a bit? We could make it in a week or a little more."

"So we make it in two and we get some rest where we can," Rick said. "There's nothing there that won't be there when we arrive in a week and a half. It's not up for negotiation. We can't keep pushing. We didn't make it this far to die of starvation and thirst. Sleep. Tomorrow we look for a place."

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"They all disagree with me," Rick said.

"They don't all disagree with you," Carol responded. "Michonne doesn't. Daryl doesn't. I saw Maggie's face and Tyreese is tired of walking too. The ones that want to push on think that we're going to—cross into Richmond and land in some Promised Land that's—that's overflowing with milk and honey. They can't wait to get there because they can't imagine being disappointed."

"D.C. all over again," Rick offered.

Carol hummed and shimmied out of her clothes. She felt dirty and disgusting. She felt like she went with the room perfectly. Rick was no better for the wear of the past few weeks on the road. All of them could use a bath. They could use a meal that they took the time to digest before they'd burned it off. They could use a day when they didn't go to bed with aching feet that sometimes bled from the miles they'd put on them.

Rick was right. If Richmond really was the Promised Land that they were hoping it might be, it would still be there when they got there—even if they were delayed by a few days.

As soon as Carol settled into the bed, Rick rooted his way over to find her. He pulled at her, dragging her body a few inches across the mattress so that she was lying next to him. He kissed the side of her head and she hummed in the negative at him.

"I feel disgusting," she said. "I couldn't be less in the mood if I tried."

"I wasn't suggesting anything," Rick said. "Nothing more than—a goodnight kiss."

Carol smiled to herself. She turned her head and used her hands to find his lips in the dark. Reading his features like she was reading braille, she smiled again when Rick kissed her fingertips. She replaced her fingers with her lips and lingered long enough to let the kiss run its course. Having his fill, Rick pulled away from her and bounced her on the cheap mattress as he searched out a spot that he considered comfortable at her side.

"They say Virginia is for lovers," Rick offered, a little humor in his voice.

"That was back when you could turn on the faucet in the bathroom and find water," Carol said. "The only thing I'd love right now is a bath."

"And tomorrow? I'll find you one," Rick said.

Carol sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. Her muscles were starting to relax and her head was starting to feel like it was swimming.

"Pretty big promises for a man who couldn't find both his boots this morning," Carol offered.

"I couldn't find my boots because you _moved _them after I went to sleep," Rick responded. "That's cheating."

"I was beating them off so you could have the excitement of building the mud up again instead of _starting _with it two inches thick," Carol said. In the darkness, Rick found the side of her face and he kissed her again. He moved, shaking the entire mattress once more, until she could feel the warmth of him against her. She turned and snuggled into him. "Do you think Carl and Judith are OK?"

"They're in with Michonne," Rick said. "I think they're as safe as they can be. Judith was asleep when I left her and—Carl'll probably stay up half the night arguing with Michonne about Aquaman or something equally ridiculous."

Carol laughed to herself.

"We could have kept Judith with us," Carol said.

Rick hummed.

"We could have, but then Carl and Michonne would have had to admit that they just like each other's company. This way? Michonne can pretend she's offering some kind of babysitting services instead of looking for a way not to be alone and Carl can pretend that he's just there to offer some comfort and support to his sister."

"Michonne doesn't mind being alone," Carol said, even though she didn't entirely believe it.

"Michonne doesn't like being alone," Rick said. "And she likes that Carl doesn't call her out on it."

"Maybe none of us like being alone anymore," Carol offered.

"You never have to be alone," Rick said. "Not anymore. Not if you don't want to."

"And you?" Carol asked.

"I hope I don't have to be alone," Rick said. "But that's really more your call than mine."

"Do you like being alone?" Carol asked.

"I never have," Rick said. "Of course, I haven't spent that much time alone either. I moved out of my house when I married Lori. The only time I was really alone was—was when I left the hospital. When I looked for her and for Carl."

Carol found Rick's hand under the cover and twined her fingers with his. In response, he tightened his own fingers around hers. She knew that finding Lori and Carl had been both a wonderful thing to Rick—the proof that there was reason in holding onto hope—and a horrible thing. It had been the beginning of the end in a lot of ways. It had been the beginning of the rollercoaster of emotions that still spun Rick out of control on a regular basis.

"I'm not going anywhere," Carol offered quietly.

"Don't," Rick said.

"Not if you don't send me away, at least," Carol said. She was mostly teasing. Rick squeezed her hand tightly in response.

"Don't," he repeated, his tone different this time.

"What do you think we'll find in Richmond?" Carol asked.

Beside her, Rick drew in a breath that she heard him release slowly. He started to speak and stopped himself twice before he committed to his words.

"We'll find something," he said. "I just—don't know what it'll be. Why? What do you think we'll find in Richmond?"

"I hope," Carol said, "that we find what everyone wants. I hope—we find Noah's family. I hope that their neighborhood is as secure as he thinks it'll be. I hope we find—everything."

"The Promised Land," Rick teased, knowing that's how Carol referred to the place that several of their group members spent their time dreaming up as they walked. Carol hummed in agreement. "Yeah," Rick said. "I didn't ask you what you_ hoped_ we'd find. I asked—I asked what you_ thought_ we'd find."

"I don't know," Carol admitted. "But after everything? I'm afraid that it isn't going to be everything we want. At best? It's the prison all over again. At worst? It's Terminus."

Rick was quiet for a moment, but then he finally spoke.

"The prison wasn't that bad," he said, seemingly choosing to ignore the mention of Terminus. "Maybe—there's some hope for a future if we can find another place like that."

"Until another Governor shows up and wants it for himself," Carol said. "Until another—plague takes us out from the inside."

"We can't think about that," Rick said. "We've got to think about the good things we can find. Not the bad things they can bring with them."

"That's what you do," Carol said. "You think about the good things. You think about what we could make. What we could build. About the little patch of peas that you could tend."

Rick laughed to himself.

"And you think about the destruction? The death?" Rick asked.

"I stay realistic," Carol said. "Grounded. I keep my eyes open."

"You keep your eyes open," Rick said, "so that they don't have to? So that I don't have to?" Carol didn't respond. She didn't have to. Rick sometimes thought she was pessimistic. Other times he agreed with her—she was simply _realistic_. "It's no way to live," Rick said. "Keeping your eyes open that way. Always expecting nothing but the bad."

"It's how I have to live," Carol said. "Fewer surprises that way. I can't take too many more surprises."

Rick laughed to himself.

"What would it take?" Rick asked. "What kind of—what kind of place would I have to find before you could breathe again? Let down your guard, at least a little, every now and again?"

"I don't know," Carol admitted. "I guess I'll know when we get there."

"Then that's what we'll keep looking for," Rick said. "We'll find it."

"I'd really settle for a bath right now," Carol offered.

Rick laughed again.

"That we'll find tomorrow. I promise you that," Rick said.


	23. Chapter 23

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**There's an Author's Note, at the bottom, about the future events of the story for anyone who's interested.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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They had managed to find a pickup truck that, with a little coaxing, would finally come to life. The other vehicles they'd tried and failed to get running, offered up a fair amount of gas that they siphoned into every little container they could scavenge on the highway and they'd piled those containers in the back of the truck.

Gas. Food. Water. That was the order of things. With gas they could move forward to find whatever they needed. Food could be found in numerous ways, but was still harder to come by than water. Almost everything else in life had become something they knew how to do without when they needed to live without it. Everything else was simply a bonus.

Having found a somewhat comfortable place to leave them, Michonne stayed behind with Carl and Judith. Her presence meant the children were as safe as they could be and it meant that all hands were free to scavenge. And that's what they were doing. Part of them went to look for any doctor's office or clinic the small town might have to offer. Part of them went to look for any guns or ammo that might be available—with fingers crossed that even the smallest towns in Georgia would have guns available somewhere—and the other part of them went in search of food and any other miscellaneous goods they could gather.

Carol wouldn't say that they'd exactly struck it rich, but they'd found a fair amount of supplies. The main store in town appeared to be one of those little standard supply stores for small towns that were neither here nor there. It had aisles dedicated to everything from cereal and snacks to screwdrivers and basic hardware. Though it had been somewhat picked over, it still had a good array of almost anything that they might need.

And it had enough that they had already sent Daryl to get another vehicle running to carry as much as possible with them.

"We'll have to drive for a while," Rick said, sliding another box of supplies into the already overflowing truck bed. "Maybe all the way to Richmond. We can't carry all this and we can't leave it behind."

"If we're talking about problems to have," Carol said, "that's one problem I don't mind dealing with. There's a good bit here. There's a month's worth of formula for Judith. Rice cereal. Even some treats for her. Aspirin and bandages, too. Even tampons for anyone who's still eating enough to get a period."

Rick looked around them and surveyed the landscape of the town. It wasn't terribly overrun. From where they were standing, Carol could count three Walkers. None of them, at the moment, were paying her and Rick any attention, but when they did notice them, they wouldn't be much of a problem to deal with. They'd seen far more Walkers on the highway that morning than they'd seen since they hit the town.

"We found a fair amount," Rick said. "If we can carry it all? We don't have to leave any of it behind? It'll get us somewhere. But it'll only get us so far." There was some irritation in his voice that simply shouldn't accompany having found the greatest amount of supplies that they'd found in a while.

Carol closed the back of the pickup to allow them to continue packing without worry that anything would fall out. The loud clang of the closing tailgate drew the attention of the three Walkers just as she knew it would. She pulled her knife out and held it, waiting for the three to reach them instead of expending any of her energy going after the things herself. Rick saw them starting to move too, because he pulled his own knife in preparation.

"So far," Carol said in response to his previous statement. "That's the story these days, Rick. It only gets us so far. But so far gets us to somewhere else where we find something else that gets us so far again. But every 'so far' keeps us moving."

"It would be nice to find a place that isn't so picked over," Rick said. "It would be nice to not be so happy about what are basically scraps."

"They're scraps because a lot of people have been through here, but they're the best scraps we've seen in a long time," Carol said. "We can either be pissed about the fact that it's not as much as we want, or we can be happy with what we've got. We're not that far from Richmond. Driving? We'll make it in no time. Two days if we don't get stopped by wrecks or Walkers. This place is close enough to be a run point for a group out of Richmond. Maybe all the missing supplies is proof there are people around and—maybe? Those people are Noah's people. I got the one in the middle."

Carol stepped forward, satisfied to have let the Walkers do most of the work in closing the distance between them, and sunk her knife into the head of the first Walker that she could reach. Rick didn't say anything and, instead, he stepped forward to take out the second. The third reached out for Rick and he pushed it back, preparing it so that he could easily put it down, and Carol stepped forward to sink her knife into its head before he could do it.

She didn't miss the smile and the half-bleated laugh that he gave her in response.

"Thanks," Rick said.

"Any time," Carol responded, not bothering to hide her own smile. "Where do you suppose Daryl is? I hope he found something. Do you think we should look for him?"

"I think Daryl's OK," Rick said. "But I'm a little worried about Glenn and Maggie. They've been gone longer than I thought they would be."

"I'm not worried about them," Carol said. "Knowing the two of them? They found a little privacy and...forgot about the time. I just hope they don't forget about the supplies."

"I don't know how much more we'll get on this truck if Daryl doesn't make it back with something," Rick said. "We should hold off loading anything else until we see what he finds."

"We can always come back for it," Carol said. "Unload the truck. Come back for another load."

"And how long do we stay here?" Rick asked her, a little bite to his tone. "How long do we stay here to _use_ what we've got? Because if we don't have more vehicles, we can't take it with us."

"So we stay here until we have to leave," Carol said. "Or we take it back and we keep looking for cars and trucks that we can load down. We have to make a decision, though, one way or another. That's what we do, right? We make decisions and we try to make the best decision that we can."

"And it sounds like you've already made one," Rick said. "So tell me what it is. What do we do from here?" Carol stared at him and finally just shook her head at him. He was frustrated. Of course he was. They all were frustrated. Nothing about their lives right now made any of them want to absolutely jump for joy. It was far from perfect. It wasn't even as good as it had once been. But at least they were all adapting. At least they were all learning to survive.

Life wasn't perfect, but they were surviving. And survival could at least leave a little hope for something more to come.

"Don't shake your head at me, Carol," Rick said. "We talked about this. We discussed it. You said you were going to help me. You said you were—you were going to talk to me. You were going to tell me what you thought and you were going to help me make—help me make the decisions that were going to get us through this."

"Except I can't talk to you when you're like this," Carol said. "No one can, Rick. You're on the defense from the moment the conversation starts. Nothing gets through to you. You're like a brick wall when you're like this—and that's why _other people_ have to make the decisions. At least then, _something _gets done."

For a split second, Carol didn't know what was going to happen. Rick's face was drawn up in his normal look of irritation when he got like this and the expression only intensified. But then, it slowly melted away some and he shook his head at her and walked away. He walked all the way to the other end of the truck, stood there looking at the ground like he was inspecting the tires, and then he came back visibly calmer. He put his hand on the closed tailgate of the truck and nodded his head at her.

"You're right," he said. "You're right. I asked you for help and—I've got to be willing to accept it. I've got to be—I've got to be willing to take it."

Carol felt her body relax. The release she felt in her muscles was the first indication to her that she'd been as tense as she was.

"You don't have to take it," Carol said. "I'm not saying that you have to take it. I'm not saying I even have the best advice. But—if you're going to ask me for my opinion? If you're going to ask me to talk to everyone else and hear their opinions? Share them with you? You've at least got to be willing to _listen_, Rick."

"I'm listening," Rick said. "So? What do we do?"

Carol shrugged her shoulders. She didn't have any more answers than Rick did. Gone were the days of relying on something like a magic eight ball and she didn't have a crystal ball with which to see the future.

She was running on instinct. They were all running on instinct.

"We're hungry," Carol said. "And thirsty. And tired. We take whatever we can find. All of it. We find whatever vehicles we can to take it with us. We stay for two days. We take whatever we can get running in two days. If we can't find enough to take it with us? We live like kings for two days and go through what we can of the stuff we'd leave behind. We're not that far from Richmond. At least—if we take a couple of days and we rest and we eat well? We'll get there with a little more strength. We find Noah's family. We see if the neighborhood has everything to offer that he says it does. Security. Safety." Carol sighed. "We try to settle. Because if we don't find somewhere to settle? This is as good as it gets. We keep moving. We keep scavenging and living off what we find until we run out again. Unless we find somewhere to—_live_? Everything is only going to get us _so far_."

Rick regarded her for a moment and then he nodded.

"We stay two days," Rick said. "Take everything we can with us. Gather all the gas we can. Hopefully it's enough to get us to Richmond."

"It'll get us closer than we are," Carol said. "That much we know for certain."

Carol turned her head when she heard a sound. It was the sound of a vehicle approaching and, not wanting to be too naïve, she put her hand on her gun to be prepared to defend herself—and Rick too, for what it was worth—against the approach of anyone that they might not know. It didn't come to that, though, because as the truck neared Daryl stuck a hand out the window and waved at them. He drove up, close enough that he'd have hit one of them if they'd stepped out in front of him, and killed the engine.

"Runnin' good," Daryl said. "Got held up. Mini-herd on the highway. Waited for 'em to pass, but we'll see them again on the way back. Saw Glenn and Maggie on their way. They got a van."

Carol couldn't help the smile that spread across her face at the thought of it. She looked at Rick, rolling her eyes in his direction, and he was looking at her with a hint of smile on his own lips.

"Did you see Rosita?" Carol asked Daryl. "Tara?"

Daryl shook his head.

"No, but I reckon they'll be along shortly," Daryl said. "Saw a sign for a pawn shop. That's probably where they're headed. They aren't back by the time we get loaded up? I'll check it out while you wait here for them. In case they come back."

"Good job," Rick said, reaching and banging his hand gently on the fender of the truck that was nearest him. "Get out. Let's get loaded up. There's a lot more we can get now that we've got the space. We're staying a couple of days. Scavenging for gas. We'll try not to stop again until Richmond."

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**AN: So I'm still planning out the rest of this story (it's a little longer than I thought it would be), but I have a lot of it already mapped out. I just wanted to touch base and let you know that I will be following some events of the show, but I'll be doing it with my own twists. That being said, one of the greatest twists, perhaps, is going to be in the development of the characters. I don't intend to go entirely OOC (though some might argue that I always do), but I don't intend to follow the way that the show treats certain characters. In particular, though I believe that all the characters already have a great deal of baggage to deal with, I don't intend to simply emotionally torture them. And I don't intend to send them all to their darkest places as often as possible and for as long as possible. By not doing that, however, I recognize that it's going to alter their behavior a little from how they might be currently behaving on the show. If this bothers you, then I'm sorry and I invite you to stop reading. If it doesn't, then I thank you for coming along with me and I hope you enjoy the trip! **


	24. Chapter 24

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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_They were making good time._

When they'd first hit the road, Carol had kept leaning over as Rick drove to watch the odometer. In all of her life she'd never felt so invigorated by the turning numbers on a dash. Each mile that clicked by was like a miniature victory. They were making good time. They would be in Richmond in a day. Two days. Three days at the very most.

When the first truck died—what Daryl suspected to be an issue involving trash and the engine, a hypothesis which Abraham seconded him on—they didn't even lose their enthusiasm. They transferred what they could to the other vehicles and they carried on. When the second truck died—from something that was likely very similar—and couldn't be brought back to life, they transferred as much as they could and carried on once more.

The shared enthusiasm of the group didn't start to take a hit until they were down to one vehicle and were facing the fact that they weren't going to make it very far driving that one slowly enough that the rest of them could keep up on foot.

The engine attracted Walkers and those outside were exposed. The speed they were moving at was taxing on the truck and the whole past automobile industry seemed against them. They passed dozens of cars whose engines wouldn't even turn over for them. All of them seemed as far gone as the rotting corpses that filled some of them. It felt like they were mocking the group.

They could have made it to Richmond in a day. Two or three at the most.

But by the time they actually reached Richmond, it had taken them almost a full week to get there. They'd lost most of the supplies they'd started with and been reduced to carrying what they had left on their backs. They weren't feeling nearly as optimistic as they'd once been. It was hard to hold onto optimism when it felt like life, at every turn, was simply knocking you down to see the look of pained surprise that crossed your face when you hit the ground.

They kept moving, though, because the only other option that they had was to sit down and wait for life to simply end. They'd come too far for that. They'd been through too much for that. They dragged their feet and walked along in silence, eventually giving up even searching for cars and trucks along the sides of the roads, and they finally saw the Richmond sign welcoming them just as darkness was starting to fall around them to mark the end of another day.

"Ten miles from here," Noah told them. "No more than that. We could make it there tonight and spend the night there. They'll have food. Water. Beds for everyone."

"Ten miles at this hour and we'll all get there as Walkers," Rick said. "We stop for the night. In the morning we'll find this place."

"Rick's right," Tyreese agreed. "It's dark. Worst case scenario is we show up at this hour and they don't know who we are. We're likely to get killed trying to stay alive. It's better to go in the morning."

Carol walked a few feet ahead of the group, bending forward to support the weight of the pack that she was carrying, and scanned the area around her. Finding a place to stay for the night wasn't going to be difficult. If they were brave enough to split up for the night, they could all have their own unprotected houses. If they wanted to stay together, though, where the safety lie, they were going to have to crowd into one house together and hope for the best.

Carol turned down one street, apparently making a decision for the whole group that followed her, and stopped on the sidewalk. From where she was standing, the place seemed to be clear of Walkers. Either that or they were all congregated in some other location. They hadn't seen any for a couple of miles.

"I don't think it matters where we stay for the night," Carol said, addressing everyone else over her shoulder with her voice barely above a hiss. "They all look the same and I don't see any fences anywhere."

"There weren't fences," Noah said. "Not out here. The gated communities were fenced in, but these houses? These were the—what do you call them? The historic houses. Doctors and lawyers lived on these streets."

"Old money," Michonne offered.

"Old money," Noah echoed.

"Old money, new money, no money," Daryl said. "It's all the same now. Dead money. Take that one. The gray one there in the middle. Looks like it's got a porch coming off the attic? Be good for getting a look around at things. Like a watch tower."

"What are you watching for in the middle of the night?" Noah asked.

"Whatever the hell's comin' to eat our faces off," Daryl responded.

Carol saw the house that Daryl was talking about, though she didn't think that the structure was actually gray. She thought that the failing light, coupled with tired eyes, was simply making it appear to be gray to Daryl. In reality, her eyes told her it was probably some shade of green. She continued on toward the structure and, having a place to rest in sight, everyone caught up with her and overtook her before she could get there.

All of them stopped at ground level, just off the porch, and waited to decide who would venture in first to clear the house while the others waited with the supplies.

"I've got it," Rick said, putting his bags down on the sidewalk.

"I'll go too," Daryl said. "Sooner we get it clean, the sooner we can eat."

"I'm coming too," Carol said, dropping her own bags. She was glad to be free of the weight of them for a moment, even if it meant that she was venturing into a dark house to go search out Walkers.

The three of them mounted the steps with Carol coming up last, so she naturally jumped when she felt fingers curl around her shoulder. She turned her head, ready to strike at the Walker that had somehow surprised them all, and laughed to herself when she realized it was only Michonne who was coming to join in on the clearing. She thought about offering her a warning, but didn't get around to it because Rick was already jimmying the lock to let them into the house.

Daryl produced a small flashlight from his pocket and shined the beam into the house as soon as the door swung open. He and Rick stepped in first and Carol and Michonne followed afterward. Michonne spotted a few decorative candles and, at the risk of burning the house down if they were surprised and knocked them over, she pulled a lighter from her pocket and used it to light them.

The house was clean.

"No Walkers in the house?" Rick asked, clearly surprised by the fact.

"Rich people got the fuck out," Daryl said. "You heard Noah. Doctors and lawyers. They were probably helicoptered out when shit got bad."

"I wouldn't say that," Michonne offered.

Carol knew that Michonne had been a lawyer—and not a small-time one—in Atlanta. It was clear that the government hadn't rushed to save her and her family any quicker than it had any of the rest of them. Still, the fact remained that the house appeared to be clear.

"We still have to check every room," Carol said. "And upstairs. At the last minute? They could've lost it. They could've..."

"Opted out," Daryl offered.

"I think it's safe to split up," Rick said. "At least long enough to clear. That way we get everybody off the street sooner. Getting dark."

Carol gestured toward the stairs to let them know that she was going upstairs and Michonne picked up one of the candles and followed Carol. At the top of the stairs there was a hallway and there were four rooms off the hallway. All of them were clear, though, just the same as the downstairs had been.

"It doesn't even look like anyone was living here," Carol said. "This looks like a show house. I mean—people lived here, but..."

"It doesn't look like they packed," Michonne agreed, still carrying her candle around. "They weren't scrambling to get out. There's nothing out of place. Even if they were clean, and even if they had maids or something, you'd think there'd be _something _out of place."

In the master bedroom, Carol picked up a picture off the dresser. Staring back at her were a middle aged couple at some sort of fancy gathering—a ball or something similar. The same couple looked back at her from other frames around the room.

"Vacation," Carol said.

"What?" Michonne asked.

"They were on vacation," Carol said. "A couple. Maybe a couple of grown kids. More money than they knew what to do with. They were on vacation. They weren't here when it happened."

"All the better for us," Michonne said. "Let's hope most of this town was on vacation. Come on. Let's go get everyone else."

When Michonne and Carol exited the master bedroom, they met Daryl coming down the hallway. He'd followed them upstairs, apparently, and he'd found what he was searching for—access to the attic.

"It's all clear up there," Daryl said. "Whole house is clear."

"Nothing's out of place," Carol said. "We think they were on vacation."

"They'll be pretty damn surprised if they get home tonight," Daryl said, walking around them and starting down the stairs. Rick met them all at the bottom, shaking his head.

"It's clear. The garage is too. But there's no car there and there's hardly any food in the kitchen," Rick said. "They were gone when it happened and it looks like they planned to be gone a long time."

"We're about two steps ahead of you," Carol said. "We think they were on vacation. Doesn't matter. We've got enough supplies for a couple of days. We'll get through the night and tomorrow we'll find Noah's family."

"I wanted to talk to you about that," Michonne said quickly as they spread out into the living room. Michonne put the candle she'd been carrying on a small decorative table near her and crossed her arms across her chest. "We don't know if Noah's family is going to be at this place. Shirewilt Estates? We don't know if it's even still there and we certainly don't know if his family is there."

"He said it was well-protected," Rick said. "He seems pretty sure that it's going to be there."

"And the prison was well-protected too," Michonne said. "Woodbury was well-protected. My point is that—we don't know if it'll be there. And if it isn't? He's practically a child. Seeing his family murdered or as Walkers?"

Carol's stomach knotted. She understood, even without Michonne saying it, what she was getting at. It was something that many of them had suffered seeing—their loved ones torn apart by this world—but that didn't mean that they wanted anyone else to suffer through that.

"You think it would be better if he didn't go?" Carol asked.

"I think it would be better if I checked it out first," Michonne said. "First thing in the morning I'll head over there. You can keep everyone busy scavenging. Tell them the truth. If you have to lie? Tell them that we're trying to take some kind of gift to soften the blow of taking in so many new mouths to feed. I'll come back and tell you what I found. If it's safe? We'll go tomorrow or the next day. If it isn't?"

"We move on," Carol said. She caught Rick looking at her and she returned his gaze. "What else are we going to do? If it's safe we've found somewhere. If it isn't? We're still looking."

Rick shook his head at Michonne.

"You're not going alone," Rick said. "We'll go with you. We'll split the group. Half of us will check out the place together and the other half can stay safe and quiet here."

"I can check the place out easier on my own," Michonne said. "I can get there quickly, I can check it out, and I can get back here. I don't even have to interact with them if it looks bad. If we go in a group we're more noticeable. We'll draw more attention from people and from Walkers."

"Rick's right," Carol interrupted. "It's too dangerous for you to go alone. If something happened, we wouldn't have any idea. I'll go with you, at least."

"I'll go," Daryl said, nearly cutting off Carol's offer to accompany Michonne. "In and out. Quiet. Won't take us no time. You two stay here. Start figurin' out where we go if we ain't goin' there."

Rick looked at Carol, obvious question on his face, and Carol sucked in a breath. She didn't want them splitting up, but she already knew that if Michonne and Daryl had their minds made up, they'd just sneak out once everyone was asleep and go anyway. At least, this way, they would know exactly when they left and when they expected them to return.

Carol nodded her head at Rick and he mirrored the action.

"Let's get everyone inside," Rick said. "Get some rest tonight. Tomorrow? You two can check out the Estates while we gather some supplies and see what the rest of the town looks like."


End file.
